


Somedays

by Living_Trashbag



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, M/M, Smut, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 04:54:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 47,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6142147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Living_Trashbag/pseuds/Living_Trashbag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days are better than others and some days are worse but most days Morty's just happy that Rick lets whatever's happening between them, happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A living Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of shorts and fics based on the RickMorty month of sin prompts. They read as one larger fic that goes over each of the prompts for that month.

Rick is a terrible influence.

Morty was beginning to learn that he too has his vices, and some of those involved substance abuse. Morty was a little more subtle about it; he always found ways to justify it to himself. Everything he did was over the counter, (honestly it wasn’t even really that bad because he only did it when he didn’t have any other way to handle.) It was just one thing… that was it! It wasn’t like Rick, who would throw back whatever he could get his hands on!

Morty had only one, specific, tiny, little problem… and it was Nyquil. Or… Zzzquil… Benadryl… Unisom… Midnite… and really any other sleep aids he could squirrel away without someone giving him dirty looks. Mostly he stopped into the CVS once a week, bought another box or two. He tried to do it once a week. Once in the morning, once a lunch, and once at night. That way no one really quite remembered him from their shift. He knew this was a red-flag. But, really, he told himself that he just didn’t want to get a reputation, that was all! A reputation for what? For exactly what he was doing.

Sleep was as rare to come by as quiet in Morty’s life. He was graduating from high school. A slim 18 something with the same round baby cheeked face he’d always had, with thicker curlier hair that hadn’t changed much. He tried to change from yellow t-shirts to yellow polo shirts but Rick kept finding ways to destroy them. So there he stood, in the bathroom of his home, gripping the sink counter with bare white knuckles, same shirt and same shoes, just a size or three bigger than before.

He’d already taken two ‘shots’ of ZzzQuil (you know, the non-habit forming sleep aid, for people who didn’t have habits) and he was contemplating a third. Sleep wasn’t hard to get, he was feeling heavy and droopy and cranky from being up past when his now medicated body wanted him to be. But it was the dreams that were starting to become a problem. Dreams of being torn apart. Dreams of being chased. Shocked. Dreams of faceless monsters stalking him in his own home, all of them forcing Morty to want to be so tired he couldn’t dream.

That’s about the time Morty decided to finally seek out Rick. Rick had to have something right? Something to make sure that his dreams would be left way the hell alone from all the residue of every adventure they went on. The walk down the stairs was hard. He did not want to wake up anyone in the home and he wasn’t even sure if Rick himself was awake. He had to admit that he needed something to help him sleep, something he hadn’t really been too keen on.

Morty wasn’t interested in hearing Rick’s cruel jabs at his constitution. He didn’t want Summer to try and find a way out for him, like he wasn’t smart enough to do it on his own. But he was less interested in reliving the night Rick had gotten him trapped in pitch black air duct, the sound of a rusted fan and the skitters of something menacing as his only form of claustrophobic company.

Low and behold Rick was missing, his room cracked open with an empty bed, and no sign of him in the garage. Morty even tried the subterranean level only to find it dark and lifeless. Curious though, Morty hadn’t explored this part of Rick’s space too much. Usually Rick demanded he be there when Morty came down. For good reason. Rick usually had some kind of terrible thing down here that was barely contained, or he had a kind of chemical that might burn his lungs out if he didn’t take a three second pause in between each inhale.

After a bit of exploration though, Morty did find what looked like a shelf of different liquids. Green, blue, neon pinks, some that glowed, others that pulsed. One particular one was a gas that moved back and forth as though trying to escape the vial it was in. Another looked to be a thick fur that vibrated when Morty reached out to touch it. There was a black one that absorbed all light, and a white one that had a blue glow around it. Labels lined each and every one of them, most of them saying, “????” All of them were on different colors of tape. Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. Serendipitously enough Morty found a vile labeled ‘SLEEP’ on a blue taped label. It seemed safe enough. A deep purple color with a black shimmer to it, thick looking, clinging to the walls of the glass vial long after Morty swirled it around. He double checked a piece of paper taped to the side of this cabinet to make sure Blue meant ‘Safe’. Thankfully, it did.

Morty sat with the vile in his hands, slowly swirling it back and forth for ten minutes, contemplating everything that could go wrong with throwing this back into his mouth. He was also getting more and more hazy, the Zzzquil curling it’s hands around his waking state and demanding it be given it’s pound of flesh that Morty had been depriving it. It was safe, and there wasn’t much in there. He could take half of the bottle and leave the rest for Rick to use on whatever. A pressure was building on his eyelids and the threat of waking up in some new nightmare was the deciding factor to him taking a small swig of the liquid.

It tasted bitter and minty all at once. It had the same thickness as pepto bismol and coated his mouth the same way. He coughed when swallowing it and was able to cap the bottle before stumbling back from the counter. It stung in his throat, it was cold, and felt like raw ice going down in droves. Morty panicked about the idea that it might kill him, that his might be how he dies. It was a very real possibility that suddenly hit home as the room’s edges got darker and darker. Morty closed his eyes and opened them again, facing another part the room. His heartbeat was in his ears, in his mouth, as he tried to grab for more air and scream. He didn’t remember closing his eyes, but when they slowly opened again he was looking at the ceiling.

 

* * *

 

               

Rick wasn’t sure what he expected.

 

He’d found Morty on the ground of his lab, passed out with the vial of one of the toxins he was working to synthesize into a party drug, broken and spread out all over the floor. Morty had it smeared on his lips and chin, so Rick was well aware the little idiot threw it down his throat for who knew what reason.

“You’re... You’re gonna be able to help him right Grandpa?!” Summer was frantic behind him, looking around for some kind of quick fix she hoped Rick had on standby for just such an occasion.

“Y-Yeah no I can fix this... Y-you’re dumb ass brother took some heavy shit though a-and it’s baAAUUusically put him into a coma. All I gotta do i-is go into his gross head and wake him up in the dream. I-It’ll pull him out of it and he’ll be fine. B-but the shit he took, it keeps you under until you can pull yourself out of it.” Rick was leaning over Morty, checking a few simple things (pulse mostly) while explaining himself to Summer.

“I mean.” Summer started, watching Rick pick up Morty and take him over to what seemed to be some kind of operation table. “That sounds biologically... really stupid, but,-“

“S-S-Summer, who.. who- Look at me!” Rick snapped when Summer started to roll her eyes and walk away.

“What Grandpa Rick?”

“Who’s the super scientist here huh?”

“Ugh, you are. Ok, I got it. Just make sure you don’t kill Morty, and I’ll cover for you from Mom and Dad..”

Rick smirked and nodded before clearing his throat and getting back to work, hooking Morty up to a machine that displayed his dream. It looked fuzzy and shifted around a bit, completely unstable looking.

“Yikes, here I was hoping for some kinda cum addled Jessica sexcapade...”

“EW! GRANDPA RICK!” Summer yipped from the base of the ladder to the hatch in the garage.

“What?! I-it would have been easy, this looks like some dumb ass existentialism nightmare trash a-and I just, didn’t you haAUAAave somewhere else to be Suuummer?” drawing her name out like an insult.

“Ugh, fine, just don’t kill and replace him Grandpa, I’ll be pissed..”

“And unaware of it if I did...” Rick muttered.

“I HEARD THAT!”

“I MEAN YOU TO!” 

Rick had not meant for this to happen though, and when Summer was finally out of eyesight and earshot, he let out a small shaking breath.

“Why the fuck Morty…” The TV fuzzed in and out for a moment, and left Rick just rubbing his temples. It wasn’t until much later that Rick had diodes attached to his own temples and a small pill in hand. Summer wasn’t there to have to explain the machine or the pill or the science behind any of it to, which was good enough for Rick. He didn’t want to justify his bullshit science to anyone, he wanted to get Morty out.

 

* * *

 

 

Once in, what Rick found was something a little outside of what he thought he might get. Assuming the blurry images he saw were something along the lines of him being captured or hauled away against his will... Rick was displeased to find himself dressed up in a Counsel of Rick’s uniform, only to be inches away from another Rick dressed normally, hovering around next to his Morty.

“A-a-aw jeez Rick... A-Are you sure we’ll be able to get out of this?” Morty was whispering but Rick was close enough to hear him.

“Y-Yeah baby don’t worry… I-I-I’ll get us out of here… T-They won’t take us. Me...” Dream Rick grumbled back, leveling his portal gun and firing off a blast. Rick heard the distinctive sound of a portal opening, and was there to see Morty being pulled through by the hand. Something was chasing them, and the only way he’d get a grip of Morty was if he followed the snot around.

Once through the portal, he landed on a planet he’d once been with Morty a few years ago. It was after he’d gotten back from his little incarceration, but not since Morty had been starting his post-graduation plans. It was the same planet Morty discovered a small orphan alien who was the host to a deadly spore. They had to shoot her in the end, at her request, to keep her people safe.

“Stop right there, Rick” Dream Rick snapped, “Hands in there air you piece of shit…”

“O-O-oh-ho ho!” Rick turned slowly, hands in the air for long enough to put them across his chest and sneer back at the other “Yeah, I’m real intimidated by a shitty made up version of me that my hormone addled grandson made up. W-whaAAUut are you gonna do? S-shoot me?”

A blast rang in Rick’s ear so loud he winced, there was a familiar heat of a phasor blast that grazed his cheek. The shot from Dream Rick literally missed only because he willed it.

“WOAH-HO-HOLY SHIT I-I-I DIDN’T EVEN PULL A GUN ON YOU!” Rick screamed as he snapped a hand to his cheek to check to see if he was bleeding. “Christ!”

“Yeah, buUUAOuut I know me. You wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”

“Sure, but I-I-I don’t really care about you, I came here to grab Morty and go.”

“Yeah, which isn’t gonna happen pal.”

“I-I-I’m happy with my Rick. I-I don’t want you to take him, me, I don’t want to leave him...” Morty muttered out from behind Dream Rick. He had a hand on his labcoat, something that Morty stopped doing just this year.

“Yeah, ok, Morty, but you don’t know what makes you happy half the time. Y-y-you’ve been shitting yooOOUorself this entire year about what you’re gonna do when you graduate. D-Don’t act all hiIEECUr... high and mighty with me about what makes you happy...” Rick sounded increasingly bored about the line of conversation.

“Look, pal, I’m not letting you take him away from me caAUAuse you don’t like what we’re doing.” Dream Rick snapped, mostly to get Rick’s attention, which had been waning.

“Ugh, fine, look. What you’re worried I’m gonna tell the counsel on you, huh?” Rick watched both Morty and Dream Rick eye him, “Sure, probably, that sounds about stupid enough for Morty to base his dream around. Here,” Rick shifted around a bit, pulling the rifle off of his back, laying it on the ground, the same with his side pistol and kicked it over. Then took off his coat and laid it on the ground “Here, I’ll even put this down huh, that way you know I’m not fucking around...” Rick took out the portal gun holstered to his leg. It would do him no favors here anyway, all for show and nothing more.

Morty nodded to Dream Rick who picked the loot up, looked Rick up and down and shrugged “Fine, s-sure, but you’re coming with us.” Dream Rick finally grumbled.

“Sure, fine, sounds great.” Rick muttered back.

“Good, glad you’re up for it” Dream Rick snapped.

“Yeah, it’s perfec-“

“LOOK, C-Can we just get going!” Morty broke up what was turning out to be an infinite feedback loop of sass that he honestly had no time for. “We can probably hunker, hunker down somewhere... You know?”

“Sounds like a plan Morty, w-what sounds like a good place to you?” Dream Rick asked, reaching to grip Morty’s shoulder. Something twisted in Rick and it stayed tense for longer than he cared to internalize. Nice to know Morty made up some sweet, nice version of him. Nice to know he just put up with the bad parts.

“I-I-I don’t know maybe uh, maybe to some kinda, like-“ Morty started, a small smile on his lips that coiled up around the knot in Rick’s body.

“Could always just hop dimensions till you loOOuoos them...” Rick snapped.

“Fine... Yeah, t-that makes sense...” Morty nodded “We did that once before so, it should work again.”

“Yeah. yeah, you’re right. Fine, everyone hop in.” Dream Rick leveled the portal gun and fired away.

Each new place was like tripping into the worse parts of Morty’s memory. They walked past parts of Morty’s life Rick didn’t remember, it’d been so many years, so many nights black out drunk away that he didn’t have it in him to hold onto them or file them away like Morty did...

They walked through a scene of Morty sitting in the car, head hung low as he held a pair of sullied pants, his face red and Beth going on how it made sense that Summer did this, it was a medical problem. Small bladder, but, God damn, Morty, you’re 14! You’ve done this three times now! How?!

It played like a movie on a wall that they were walking in front of. Dream Rick made another portal and they were once more in front of another movie, large and towering and playing next to them.

  
Morty was just standing outside next to his grave. Well, the grave of the Morty he’d buried. He looked back towards the house and then back down at the mound of dirt. Morty lifted his foot and kicked away at some of it before he turned around, ran inside, and threw up. Jerry came in to ask if he was feeling alright, only to have Morty push past him and run into his room. There was a journal that Morty grabbed for in his desk. It had a check list.

“I am Morty. I am alive. I came from another dimension. This is still my family. It’s ok.”

  
It was written on every page.

Rick grimaced and continued to follow through more of these portals, one after another.

  
Morty watching the sea of his other selves going home. Coming home to look out of that window at his own body again and writing C-137 in big, bold, black letters on a scrap of paper he kept in his wallet.

Morty coming down to the basement to just look at the empty tubes where Rick’s clones used to be.

Morty finding that small candy wrapper and hoarding it in a box, pulling it out for a while to check to make sure that it was, indeed, him having a terrible character flaw.

Morty coming home to a house he didn’t recognize, sneaking past Beth who was so drunk Rick was impressed and scared all at the same time. Sneaking into Rick’s room and stealing one of his sweaters, ferreting it away in his room and, for a week, or so pulling it out to smell. He slept with his arms around it, his whole body curled around it like maybe it might somehow shield Rick from all he was going through.

“I-I-I hate to be THAT asshole” Rick snarled, stopping everything in its tracks, that tense _something_ in his body getting ready to snap in some ugly way if they lingered too much longer. “But none of this is really getting us anywhere…”

Dream Rick didn’t say anything as he pulled the trigger to another portal. This one landed them in a shitty motel Morty and Rick had been to after a job had gone sour just a few nights ago. Rick had been pissed something fierce at Morty for fucking up the deal by mixing up two simple people. He didn’t really remember much of that night either, but it had Morty looking abysmal.

“Don’t... Look, hey...” Dream Rick leaned down a little lower than Morty, the kid was almost as tall as him, a head smaller maybe, so getting down on his knee was a little unneeded. “M-Morty hey I’m sorry, I just picked what was last in the portal gun ok?” He smiled and pulled Morty into a hug “It’ll be fine baby, we’ll leave here soon... Sorry I screamed at you.”

Rick watched and then finally, his hackles on a full rise, came unhinged, that tension in his stomach, heart, throat, it was all over and it rubber banded, trashing back around on something sore and angry in him.

“I-I-Is this some kinda double ended fucked nightmare for the both of us huh?! Did you come in here to teach me some kind of lesson and somehow didn’t think you’d be stuck here!?”

Morty looked confused and Dream Rick just glared.

“I told you if you don’t like it pal you caAAUan leave, the doors right there..” Dream Rick pointed behind Rick.

“No, fuck you, you sappy sack of shit, Morty is this the version of me you really want? I got news for you, you clingy dingus, it’s never gonna happen, there’s no version of me out there that’s EVER going to treat you like this!” Rick hissed,

“H-hey, c’mon, I know it’s not… normal but, I mean, it’s not the worst thing either.” Morty blushed and looked to his feet... His hand reached out to grab Dream Rick’s hand who took it in his own without a second thought, like it was reflex.

“Yeah, well news flash, it is. It’s not what you’re going to get, it’s just some stupid fantasy you made up to make yourself forget all the shitty things that I do… or… something, I’ve got no clue, but it’s fake and I-I-I’m for one, am sick of it, C’mon Morty, time to go..”

“W-w-what?” Morty asked, scooting closer to Dream Rick who, held him closer, even learned down to press a small kiss on his head.

“Alright, fuck this, Morty, we’re going. Now.” Rick wasn’t playing around anymore, holding a crisp tone to each word, making sure to end all discussion about the matter.

“R-Rick?” Morty turned to Dream Rick continued to try and kill Rick with a stare.

“G-God dammit, Moooorty, that’s not a real Rick. It’s a dream, this is all some fucked dream you’ve trapped yourself in and I’m sick of this a-hoOAAaole being some goody-goody-gum-drop version of me. He’s a piece of shit-“

“SHUT UP! Y-you don’t get to call him that! O-o-ok!?” Morty snapped, stepping forward his hand still tangled in Dream Rick’s. It shut Rick up for a moment as Morty laid into him. “I-I-I’m fine with us, what we are! I don’t care that he’s older than me o-o-or that... Or that the Counsel thinks it’s some kinda violation, i-i-it’s none of their business since Rick’s not even PART of your thing...” Rick just watched him, getting a little more confused by the second. “I don’t care that you know… That he’s my grandpa...” He blushed a deep shameful red and wavered, still holding onto Dream Rick’s hand, “I.. I-I-I really love him... I know what that means a-and... I don’t give a shit anymore...”

There was a silence that filled the room as Rick finally put two and two together. Morty was about to continue before, very slowly and very plainly Rick finally spoke.

 

“Yeah, but, it’s still fake Morty.” Was all Rick said. “This guy knows it… “

Dream Rick just sneered, and when Morty turned to look at him, said nothing.

“G-go on and tell him. Tell him that you’re real and it’s all fine and you’ll be space Bonnie and Clyde.”

Dream Rick said nothing.

Morty just stood there numb for a moment, his fingers finally starting to slip out of Dream Rick’s own.

“C-Cmon, Rick, you said... we’d...”

“Yeah, and it’s the end of the line Morty... Wake up. It’s all a bunch of bullshit...” Rick muttered.

“N… But that means…”

“Yeah, it’s me, it’s the Rickest Rick, here to come save the Mortiest Morty, from yet another coloOOAAUoossal and embarrassing fuck up...”

“Ooh. Oh god... N-no...” Morty looked back to Dream Rick who just wasn’t there anymore. When he went to look at Rick, the motel was gone, replaced with just white, empty and endless space... Morty turned to look behind him and there was nothing but white space back there as well. “Rick I-I-I…”

“I don’t care Morty... It’s fine... Let’s get you home...”

 

* * *

 

 

Summer came back downstairs an hour later only to find Rick holding a sobbing Morty.

  
“Erm... D-Did I come back at a bad time?” She whispered, Rick shook his head, holding Morty who was, at the sight of his sister coming in to see him sobbing, tried to contain himself.

“I-I just got Morty out of his stupid nightmares.” Rick muttered.

“Shit.” Summer reached out to pet at Morty, who winced but didn’t say anything. “Jeez, Morty, I didn’t know they were that... bad?”

“They weren’t... He’s just over emotional. I-i-it’s a side effect of the sleeping poison. It’s long winded and boring to listen to and I’m sure you’re just gonna call it bullshit science again Summer so...”

“God damn, Grandpa Rick, sorry.” Summer balked and rolled her eyes “I-I’ll talk to you later Morty ok?”

Morty nodded and hid his face again.

“You’re... Y-y-you’re not gonna tell her?” Morty whispered.

“No…” Rick hugged him closer.

Morty was quiet and shook.

“You’re… not going to… Not gonna, I mean... You don’t think I’m…-“ he was starting to choke up again, shaking in Rick’s arms as he gripped harder at Rick’s shirt.

“No. I don’t hate you, o-o-or think you’re grooOOUooss. It’s fine.”

Morty just nodded and stayed there for a while. When he was able to get a grip of himself Rick followed him up to his room, took each and every single pill he’d had stored away under his bed, and took them for himself. Morty shook a little, alone there with his own thoughts, about what Rick had learned, about what Rick had admitted to him.

Rick went down to his own room and flavored what was left of that Zzzquil with as much Everclear as the container would hold.


	2. Sleepaid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty can't sleep and doesn't have anything conventional to help him, not after Rick took all his stuff. So now he's gotta find another way to get some kind of rest.

Three weeks had passed since Rick took Morty’s sleep aids away.

Morty looked like shit for it too, he looked like he’d seen seven wars and been on the losing side of each one. Summer had been hovering too close because she wanted to make sure Morty was doing ok, to see if he needed anything, if he was feeling alright. Beth asked if he’d been sleeping okay and the dry sarcastic laugh came from Rick’s mouth, rather than his own. Jerry simply said it was graduation nerves. He got them too when he was Morty’s age.

Rick was acting like nothing happened and it tore Morty up worse than if Rick had treated him like nuclear fallout. He’d have understood Rick giving him the widest berth possible, and he would have understood him telling him to get away. It’s what he wanted. Maybe. He wanted something… some kind of acknowledgement that he had some kind of gross issue that should be taken care of.

But instead Rick got into his personal space when teasing him. He gave him that lazy half-cocked smile and pushed all his buttons about being a horny teenager with no self-control. It made Morty furious. The fact that he never really knew if Rick was putting this face on for just him, or if he’d just been lying to everyone this whole time.

 

He hated it… even if it was the best thing Morty could have hoped for.

 

Rick was with Summer tonight, which also never went well on Morty’s nerves. Keeping his little outburst from Jerry and Beth was one thing, they would do everything in their power to do the exact opposite of what Rick and Morty wanted, which was to be together. Even if that draw might not have been as intense on Rick’s end, they both knew they couldn’t do much without the other.

Summer on the other hand, was good at keeping her mouth shut and soaking in information. It made Morty’s stomach turn that Rick might let slip that her brother was interested in fucking his own grandpa... Not that he assumed Rick took Summer so he could pour out his heart and soul, but still… it made sleeping impossible. He’d been lying in bed, tossing and turning since 10 PM, when he had crawled in.  Now it was 1 AM. He checked his box to see if maybe Rick left him something mild, something he could have when he couldn’t sleep. But it was empty.

Morty considered just going down and stealing them back, grabbing them and taking them for himself once more. Rick probably wouldn’t even miss them, all things considered. Besides, Rick’s room was a train wreck, so there was no reason to assume that they would even be missed for a week at least. Maybe he’d take just enough to get himself through this week, maybe find a better place to hide his totally non-habit-forming drugs.

 

Creeping down the stairs had become like breathing to Morty. He’d done it enough times.

 

When he got to Rick’s room, he creaked the door open, careful to slowly turn the knob and hold it taut while pressing on the wood. A laser scanned his ankle, a light blinked three times and then nothing happened. Morty knew it was an alarm to keep Jerry specifically out and did nothing more than alert Rick on his phone who had entered his room and at what hour. It hadn’t occurred to Morty that this might be the biggest oversight in his plan. Still, he slowly released the door handle, grabbed the other side, turned it again and pushed the door closed, returning the latch into its home and only then turning the light on.

Rick’s room was surprisingly clean. It always was. The tables he’d set up for himself were cluttered with tools, broken looking crystals of different colors, bolts, screws, ratchets, glue and solder, but it was all put away and in its place. His bed was made, and next to it, on a make-shift bedside table, was a bottle of the Zzzquil he’d confiscated from Morty. There was also a photo of Morty and Rick passed out in each other’s arms on the sofa. It was one Beth had taken and printed to put in a scrapbook at some later date. There was also the photo of everyone together in the hamster ass dimension.

Morty’s fingers grazed the photo of him and his family, looking it over and pondering the idea of Rick waking up to this every day. He looked at all the papers nailed to the walls, the mental leaps Rick’s mind made splayed out in the physical form of red and black and blue strings, all linking them together to make something cohesive. His hand reached out to touch those tendrils of yarn and traced Rick’s mind for a while, going from a paper filled to the brim with advanced equations, to another paper that simply had a conceptual illustration to another invention he’d already finished.

He went to a pile of clothes that were laid out on the ground and simply rifled through them till he found one of Rick’s coats... The fabric was soft and worn, with several pockets that had been sewn into it for Rick to just cart around who knew what. What whenever he wanted. Morty brought it to the bed and simply ran his thumbs over the fabric. Rick’s cot gave out a moan of irritation at Morty’s weight but he doubted it would wake the house.

Glancing back at the empty bottle of Zzzquil, then glancing at the pile of pills Rick had confiscated (and honestly there was a pile, half of which Morty hadn’t even remembered buying) he wondered if this is where Rick started… Probably not, but the thought of Rick wanting to spare Morty that kind of trouble was a sweet sentiment.

Morty also wondered if that sentiment came from the Rick he wished he had, or the one he had now.

He rubbed at his eyes and laid down on the cot, simply looking up at the ceiling.

Was that Rick the Rick he wanted? Was that the Rick he was making up and falling for? A Rick that said sorry after he tore into Morty’s confidence, tearing him open and leaving him raw, left to piece himself back together? A Rick that protected him and held him, rather than the Rick who brutally teased him and put him in danger more times that he could count?

Or was it just what he hoped might happen if Rick loved him the way Morty loved him? Morty hated the fact that Rick had been the center of his universe in admiration since he first stumbled drunkenly into his life all those years ago, to being the center of his adoration in this past year. He could even remember the night he felt his throat go dry, his face redden and his heart pounding so loud in his ears he couldn’t hear every inch of his brain screaming no at the top of his lungs.

Rick was leaning over him, not even looking at him, his entire body on all fours over him, shielding him. Rick was looking forward, a wicked sneer that had his teeth bare as his arm leveled a phasor and fired off three loud blasts that couldn’t deafen the hammering of his heart in his ears. When Rick looked back down he said something. Morty couldn’t remember what now, he just saw Rick’s lips move before he lifted himself up off of Morty and leaned down to help him up off of the floor…

 

Morty would fist his dick to that image till he was coming around a knuckle wedged in-between his teeth for over a month after that one.

 

He thought about doing that now.

 

But somewhere between remembering exactly why he was as fucked up as he was, and trying to piece together what he was looking for in Rick, sleep finally came for him.

 

* * *

 

 

Rick expected to find a box moved from the pile of sleep-aids. He expected Morty to already be back in his room by now, sleeping through some kind of weird emotional turmoil. He hadn’t expected to see the pile of meds untouched, Morty curled under one of Rick’s lab coats and asleep on his cot.

There was something heavy that dropped into Rick’s stomach, and from the dull ache in his chest he assumed something had fallen from there. Morty’s face, asleep, serene and calm, his lips parted just enough to get in air, those soft brown curls tumbling a little into his eyes and curling into the shell of his ear, a soft rhythmic motion of him breathing.

Morty ghosted Rick’s own lips on nights where he was left alone with no drink to tell him otherwise. His bright smile and cautious optimism crawled in and around his heart in wicked ways that drove him so far up a wall he wanted to tear into Morty so fast and so deep that he’d never get close enough for Rick to fuck him up…

But Morty still wanted him and Rick couldn’t tell if the tension in his throat at knowing that Morty also wanted to be indulgent in the most carnal ways was excitement or disappointment. Maybe it was a little bit of both.

 

“You’re a sick fuck Sanchez...”

 

Rick shifted to sit next to the cot, the small of his back crashing into the metal edge of the bed. His fingers reached out to pet at those brown curls before deviating to under the bed, pulling out a half full bottle of tequila.

He finished it in record speeds.

Rick looked over after every swig, willing Morty to wake up and see what he fucking did to Rick half of the time... Still he leaned forward, lips lingering too close to Morty’s cheek, enough to let those lips absorb some of the heat from his skin.

 

* * *

 

 

He was in the garage when Morty woke up.

 

“M-Morning Rick...”

“Yeah, morning, Morty...HaAAUand me one of those socket wrenches. W-We haAAAuave some-a... some... Thing- thing... A thing to do today. Important...” Rick was more terse than usual so Morty didn’t put up a fight.

“D-Did you just. Get in?”

“Y-Yeah, S-SuuUUOOAUummer and I got what I needed a-and she’s tired from that so I need you today. Y-You think you can handle one ni-niIIEAAUOout... .night out?”

“Yeah sure? P-probably.” Morty shrugged, handing over the socket wrench and watching him assemble a box of sorts

“W-what is that?”

“I-It’s a cooler, i-it shrinks down organic life into something really... LooOOUOok it’s the same tech that allows us to go into my caAAar battery M-Morty. I need to it harvest some ink from these jellyfish since you draAAUAank the sample I had.”

Morty didn’t say anything, just looked at his feet

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Bring some suUUOUun screen, it’s a pretty intense beach there... ”


	3. Sunsets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty and Rick have a little well deserved R and R at the beach. Things seem to be going ok despite their past weeks.

Rick was so impatient with Morty that he just asked the kid keep out of his way.

Which was all well and good with Morty, he’d actually packed a pair of swimming shorts as well as some sunscreen and towels. When Rick all but jumped out of the car and towards the water, Morty kind of enjoyed the entire atmosphere. The beach itself was made of a kind of black sand that went on for miles, the water was a deep rich magenta and crashed against what looked like large blue sapphires from the seabed. A kind of bird hovered around some patrons eating at their own table, but it had four wings and no real head.

Morty sighed, watched as Rick set down his mini cooler and looked back for Morty, who, waved from the car and grabbed his stuff to join Rick.

“S-So, are we gonna just, grab these, uh, w-w-what are they again?”

“Zooples. Zoopies if you’re an asshole.” Rick muttered, grabbing for another component to this weird machine. It looked like a tube that was being attached to the top of a small box, and when it was sufficiently stuffed in, Rick threw the hose into the water. “Fuck it.” He grumbled, “It’ll woOOAROork.”

“Is that gonna, what, suck up some, u-u-uh, some, suck up some of the Zooples?” Morty asked, looking over how shallow the hose was in comparison to where the box was.

“What? No Morty Christ I need water to fill the box with.”

“Jeez, Rick! Alright! Y-you want me to help at all?” Morty barked, feeling less and less useful and more there to absorb whatever hung-over disaster this was.

“N-Nah, Just...” Rick took out a much thinner hose and attached it to a metal ball. That was then stuffed into a small gun looking thing that Rick cocked, turned, and shot into the horizon. “There we go.” Rick nodded “It’ll… the thing… the booOOUOox’ll beep when it’s got enough Zooples, and it’ll spit out the other things we don’t’ need.”

“O-O-Ok so, wha-what did, what did you need me for?” Morty asked, looking at the box and then the beach and then Rick who was pulling out his flask to take his first swig of the day. Well, at least as far as Morty knew.

“Beach day motha-fucka!” Rick shrugged, his grin ebbing away faster than ever, a lazy yawn coming from him. “Gonna set up a towel, lay down and catch some sunbeams.”

Morty just looked a little confused, and almost shocked it was going to be that easy.

“JeeEAAUEesus, Morty, go get changed, g-go swim, go try and get into some poor girls pants, eat some crappy beach food and just enjoOOUooy yourself.” Rick reached out and shoved Morty’s shoulder which got a small sheepish yelp.

“Sheesh ok ok...” Morty huffed before he finally went back to the car to grab at the bag Rick knew he packed. Rick took a hard pull from his flask and watched the kid go. He needed to get out from the house, they both did. So why not come here?

 

* * *

 

 

Morty was in a pair of long swim trunks a few moments later, orange and yellow with a green stripe down the side. He had with him his own towel for laying on and another to dry off with. He also had some sunscreen, his phone with a pair of headphones, and then lastly a small bucket and shovel. After all, there was no law against being 18 and having sand castle making equipment.

“H-hey Rick?” Morty asked after a moment

“Hmm?” Rick was well ahead of Morty, having abandoned his coat, sweater, and belt a while ago. He had also stolen Morty’s beach towel when he was busy looking for stuff in his bag.

“Y-You’re not fucking around here r-right?”

“What’s thaAAUuaat supposed to mean Morty? H-Huh?” Rick eyed Morty, nearly glaring at him before turning his glance away, careful not to linger.

“I mean, s-seems kinda weird, you know, taking me out here when you didn’t really need me is-is all I was saying... Seems just, like, you know, maybe you have something else?”

“Morty I’m noOOUot pulling a fast one on you. You need to just relax a-and enjoy yourself. You look like garbage a-and I figure we could come out here, fish a little, and have ourselves a mother-fuckin vacay withoOOuot anyone else getting in the way.” Rick motioned to the beach “You think you can handle that Moooorty?” he reached into his pockets and pulled out a pair of sunglasses to blot out Morty and the sun.

“Ye-yeah, Rick. Erm, d-d-do you think maybe you could, erm, you know, maybe, uh, rub some of this.” Morty bit his lips and passed the suntan lotion back to Rick “O-on my back? I-I-I can’t reach...”

Rick was going to set Morty on fire, but he grabbed the lotion none the less, an eyeroll he made sure Morty saw when he flicked his sunglasses back into his hairline.

“Turn.” It was the closest thing to a yes Morty was going to get.

Running those fingers along Morty’s back was torture. He knew full well that the both of them were caught in a weird space at the moment, each enjoying the touches more than they wanted to let the other onto. The difference was Rick had a better poker face than Morty ever did. So when Rick’s fingers glided up his smooth skin, he was able to keep his mouth shut.

Morty’s skin was like silk, smooth and soft and warm. He could feel the shoulder muscles tense just under Morty’s skin when the cold cream hit his already warm body. The tense knobs of flesh around each vertebrae was hard enough for Rick to swallow down, and while he might have had a better poker face, he was glad that Morty was facing the other way. The one and only hand on Morty (two was too risky, too tempting to settle on his hips and drag him far away to hoard all to himself…) stopped at the dip in Morty’s lower back.

He wanted to explore more, to actually touch the skin he’d thought of for a while now.

“You can reach the rest from here riiIIUUEEAaight?” Rick coughed and took his hand back.

“Y-yeah…”

Rick drained the rest of his flask and cursed his pacing.

 

Morty on the other hand actually gave in to the mandatory fun after a while. He sat at the edge of the water and reflected on all of this for an hour or so. He finally settled with himself that he’d treat this the same way Rick tried to get Morty to treat everything. Don’t think about it. So instead Morty simply enjoyed scooting his feet under the sand only to have the fruit punch colored waves of this strange ocean uncover them.

Rick somewhere in all of this eventually grew bored of just soaking in the sun and picked up a stick to start drawing something in the sand. Morty came over after a bit and asked what he was doing only to bossed around to start making towers. Morty was under the impression Rick was working on some kind of new space-ship or maybe a crazy invention, but halfway through Rick’s orders, Morty realized they were well on their way to making a pretty impressive sandcastle.

Morty went looking for tidepools and Rick informed him he wouldn’t find any, and sure enough about twenty or so later Morty came back looking defeated only to find Rick fortifying the sandcastle with a massive moat, a few make shift cannons and a fish or two from the cooler swimming around in the moat.

When they got hungry Rick took him to the boardwalk and they got a nice fried something or other.

“Don’t think too hard on it Morty.” Was all Rick said before taking a large bite of something. It was fried, it was warm, but it tasted like salty bananas. The outside had the texture of tempura but the inside was soft and firm like ice-cream. It was actually ok. They both got a bag of some kind of local chip which were light and airy like a cheeto-puff but tasted like chocolate.

Rick and Morty sat for hours together just talking about nothing, and for a moment between them things felt like they should have. Like Morty never admitted he wanted to be with Rick, like Rick didn’t have that same want. They just laughed about the fact that Summer had to make Rick pull over to piss every two hours. They grumbled about the fact that Jerry kept trying to superimpose everyone’s problems as ones he’s already had and fixed.

The sun was setting and a lot of people were already gone and packing up to leave. Rick somewhere along the way pulled the cooler from its resting spot, filled with enough Zoopies, or Zooples, for Rick to get back the ink Morty drank. Morty and Rick sat in silence for a moment before Rick turned to Morty, taking him all in. All gangly limbs and an easy smile that made Rick pine for a refill on his flask.

“W-WhaAUUut are you plans for graduation?” Rick had the misfortune of asking. He also had the misfortune of watching Morty’s face fall in seconds flat.

“I-I-I erm... Don’t... you know… I don’t know yet?” Morty admitted, rubbing at his arms for a second, watching the light blue sun shine in through those clear cobalt blue rocks, turning the water a pink and purple mix. “I don’t… I don’t think I’d do well in school.”

“Probably not with your track record.” Rick muttered.

“I mean, I just, everyone wants me to go? It’s like it’s ex-expected of me a-a-and I don’t think I’ll like it? You know? Like I think I’m gonna do it because i-i-it’s the right thing to do a-and it’s what Summer’s doing already and Mom went and it’s kind of...” He waved at the scene in front of them. “I think I’d… I’d miss this.”

Rick was silent hoping Morty wouldn’t-

 

“I’d miss you.”

 

Morty’s words lingered in the air too long, they asked for Rick and him to hash out what happened, or what might happen between them now. They asked Rick to show the hand he’d been playing so close to his chest now that Morty played his.

“Hey better idea. Why don’t you get in one last swim huh?” Rick nodded back towards the water “You knoOOuow... Get all that sand shit off of you before you get in my car?”

“Wha...” Morty looked back “Y-Yeah?”

“Yeah c’mon, one last swim. I’ll take a picture, we’ll show it to Jerry and he’ll get a-a-all pissy about it.” Rick smirked…

“Is that smart so late?”

“It’s fine Morty, sheesh, the kipples don’t come out for another hour...”

Morty eyed Rick for a moment, shrugged and headed towards the water. Rick leaned down to grab their beach towel and shook it out, grabbing Morty’s bucket and shovel, grabbing his backpack and shoving it all in.

“You coming?!”

“Yeah, yeah, gimme a second..” Rick pulled out his phone, read some of the missed texts he got and rolled his eyes as Beth complained about her kids missing a nice family dinner together twice now. When Rick looked up Morty was waste deep in the water, the powder blue of the sun curling around the edge of his form like a halo, the pink, purple waters looking good against his pink skin which was reflecting the light like little stars.

Yeah he wanted a picture of this, a physical one. He could indulge this once. So he wandered over, told Morty to wave and snapped a shot, looking it over proudly. It was a damn good photo.

 

Which was good because about three seconds later a kipple reached a long tentacle out, grabbed Morty by the arm and ripped it clean off of his body.


	4. Scar Tissue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick tries to take care of Morty as best he can, but sometimes there's unexpected complications.

Rick wasn’t about to fuck around with this.

Morty fell down in seconds, looking towards his left shoulder and just screaming. Rick shut it all down, the guilt of suggesting Morty go into the water, the panic of what to do next, and the anger at the kipple for being so fucking close to the shallows and deciding to reach for Morty of all things. He ran hard towards the water, ignoring his now suddenly soaking pants and shirt, ignoring all the items he left on the beach. He grabbed for the portal gun and leveled it right under Morty, letting the green swirling light slowly suck him, his arm, the water and sand into some unknown location. Rick twisted around and launched a second towards all their abandoned shit and jumped in after Morty.

He’d get the car later.

Falling from the ceiling, they landed smackdab in the middle of a pretty shabby looking hospital waiting room. It was the first place Rick could think of. Morty was still screaming, he writhed on the floor and kicked his feet as if maybe he could outrun the pain firing up his entire body. Sand and water was already getting into the wound. Rick snapped his head towards the receptionist, who looked slightly terrified that a bunch of sand, water, a screaming teen and an old man had just been poured from a hole in the ceiling.

“Sir… I need you to-“

Rick leveled his portal gun at her, giving her a look that could murder suns if they had the misfortune to be caught in his line of sight.

“Give me an open room. Now.”

She didn’t argue, she blinked all seven of her eyes and stepped out of his way slowly, hands in the air. She pushed a small button on the wall to open a pair of sliding metal doors. Rick kept the gun level to her and only removed it when he had to scoop up Morty from the floor. He was starting to quiet down, something Rick was terrified of. Rick moved through the hall, doctors stepping back against the walls, nurses stalk still, unwilling to be at the blast end of anything Rick might throw at them.

He found a room in a matter of seconds where he gently laid Morty down on its hospital bed.

“Shh, baby, it’s gonna be alright.” Rick grumbled, to Morty or to himself, he wasn’t even sure. He didn’t wait to get started in working on Morty, locking the door behind him as he tossed the gun onto the counter and grabbed a pair of rubber gloves.

 

* * *

 

 

Hours went by before Rick leaned back on the counter and let out a tired breath. Morty was passed out, having screamed himself asleep. It didn’t help that he’d taken the sedatives Rick had had to negotiate for through a crack in the door, with a lot of yelling and gun flashing. A lot of what he asked for was given with incredulous looks, and hesitant disgust, but they weren’t about to argue with him. Rick looked like he could and would kill anyone who got in the way.

The arm had been reattached to Morty, cleaned, and repaired. This wasn’t the first time Rick had to attach a limb, but the first time he’d done it to some poor sap, he’d attached it poorly and it had fallen off. The second time he had been working with a hand and that was it. This time… The only thing that showed that it perhaps had been ripped off at all was a small jagged line of too-light-skin, a buildup of scar tissue already forming. When Rick finally unlocked the door, a doctor came in and stood quiet next to Rick.

“I-I’ll paaAAAUay for what I used.”

“You’d better…” was the only thing the creature next to Rick huffed. He was short, shorter than Morty, one single eye and feathers everywhere. He had hands that attached to wings and they were sort of crossed, or about as crossed as they could get.

“That was some fancy footwork for a non-medical professional.” The bird thing said after a moment. “You know, the limb won’t work for a-“

“At leEEEAUUSst a month yeah. While the nerves all attach to their whole thing. I know the science behind it doc. Look I don’t wanna moOO-O-oove him.” Rick coughed and nodded back to Morty “You cool with le-le-let-t-lee… With having us crash here for the night?”

“You can stay here for the remainder of this night. But I’ll ask you to compensate us the credits. And to never wave a gun around in here again.”

“Here.” Rick pulled from his coat a plastic card, handing it over. It was transparent sans a few glowing blue numbers and a yellow R on the edge. He had a few stolen Rick cards, but then again what Rick didn’t steal from other Ricks?

 

* * *

 

 

Morty woke up in Rick’s car.

There was a kink in his neck and his eyes hurt even though they’d been closed for who knew how long. The smell of liquor was thick in the air, and it was only until Morty sat up and took in where he was that his vibrating seat was actually Rick’s unsteady hands tilting the ship.

Morty only remembered bits and pieces of what had happened after Rick had taken his photo. He remembered being shocked that something was even grabbing his arm, he remembered Rick holding him and shushing him, he remembered waking up in a dim room, the feint sound of a beep ringing in his head and keeping time to the beat of his heart. There had been a warm weight on him and when he had looked down he had seen Rick’s head laying just so in his lap. He’d wanted to say something to Rick, maybe ask where he was, but the words died on his teeth when sleep came for him once more.

To be fair that was probably the longest he’d been asleep for in a while.

“You gonna live?” Rick mumbled, throwing a can behind him and grabbing at the wheel, leering ahead and then leaning back to prop his knees against the cork handled semi-circle.

“Y-yeah?” Morty asked and looked down to his hand, his arm, all of it, which seemed to be attached at least. He couldn’t feel it and he pinned it on the fact that it might be asleep at the moment. Who knows? He could have slept on it funny. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. “I-I-I was pretty sure my arm, that something ha-happened to my arm?” Morty tried to move his fingers but they wouldn’t respond.

His arm was dead weight and panic was starting to rise in Morty’s throat, shooting past his stomach and chest entirely, like some terrible reflux.

“R-Rick I-I-I-I can't- I can’t move my arm!” Morty yelped, trying to will it into motion, even going so far as to try to kickstart his nerves by picking up the limb and dropping it.

“It got ri-riiIIIAAUEEepped off M-Morty.” Rick slurred, “I hadda take care of it, you know, sew you up a-a-and all`a that.” It was clear he’d been drinking enough to kill at least two men dead in their tracks and it caused Morty to tense even more.

“W-Where are we uh, go-going huh?” Morty tried desperately to get a small grip on what the situation was.

“H-Home Morty. You-YoOOUER- You’re going home.”

Morty stayed silent.

There was a flavor in Rick’s words that resonated with a lover realizing finally that their partner no longer loved them. Bitter and cold and detached but simply sharing a space because it was familiar and expected.

It caused Morty to shiver.

“S-So, erm, m-my arm it uh, w-w-will it work again?”

“In a month.” Was all Rick said.

A deafening silence filled the time it took to get back to the Smith home. Once they were there Rick parked the ship somewhere along the driveway and the lawn, something they both knew Jerry would pitch a huge fit about. Still, Morty found a way to stumble out of the car, his hand still dead to the world, and most of Morty’s left side felt like it’d been hit by a truck.

“Go ahead, Mor-M-MoOOURrty, I’ll meet you inside.” Rick slammed his car door and headed straight for the garage. Morty flinched at the sound but did as he was told.

 

Walking into the Smith house felt more like stepping into an alien world than dimension hopping with Rick ever had. Morty couldn’t spare the time to figure out when that had happened. He assumed it was sometime after he’d buried himself, but that it didn’t hit him till he was around 16 or so. Morty felt like he was constantly just dropping in on earth. That he’d come home to pretend to be a normal human boy, to go to school to keep on the charade that he was indeed “Human Male, age 18” but Rick was the one who let him out of that terrarium and allowed him to free-float and just be Morty.

Summer and him had talked about it before. Summer was smart enough to keep some kind of attachment to earth so she didn’t feel out of place with either.

  
“It’s like going to Math class and then going to Art class, they’re totally different sure, but it’s the same school Morty.”

 

He envied her sitting on the sofa just texting about the newest episode of who actually cared. She glanced up and nodded with the smallest and bored “hey,” ever.

“H-Hey” Morty rubbed at his eyes and sat down on the sofa, his arm jamming into one of the cushions funny.

“What’s up with you?” Summer lifted a brow, her appraising glance running down to Morty’s dead arm. Finally peeling her eyes away from her phone to actually take inventory of her little brother. “Your arm asleep?”

“N-No, it was ripped off… Rick put it back on.” Morty groaned, laying his head back and wincing slightly from the kink still trying to work its way out from around his nerves.

“Oh, my god, Mom and Dad are gonna be pissed when they find out.” Summer looked concerned for a second, but then she was grinning slightly. “Did Grandpa Rick give you a line to tell them about it?”

“N-not yet. He’s really drunk right now.” Morty’s face wasn’t the kind of tired Summer was used to, it looked heavy. Her smile fell, was having a hard time not worrying about Morty more and more since he had drank whatever kind of random chemical he’d found in Rick’s basement.

“Well-” She started, trying to think of something that might help. “You wanna go upstairs? I’m sure Grandpa Rick and I can work something out for you? You look bushed anyhow so...” Morty turned to her and gave her a weary smile and furrowed his brows. A silent ‘you’d do that?’ that she smiled at and nodded to the stairs.

“Thanks, Summer.” Morty whispered as he snuck upstairs.

“Whatever.” Summer retorted, turning back on the sofa only to see Rick stumble in a few seconds later. “Oh, heeey Grandpa. Heard you and Morty had a fun time…”

“Can it, S-Su-SuuUUUOOghuummer.” Rick coughed and pounded his chest for a moment, swallowing thickly before glaring at her.

Rick looked like shit and Morty was absolutely right, he was beyond his normal levels of intoxicated. Summer glared right back and looked to her phone once more.

“Sheesh, grandpa, sorry I asked.”

“Where’s your Mom and Dad?” He slurred, leaning on the door to look nonchalant but anyone with an ounce of sobriety could tell it was to keep him from stumbling to the ground.

“Around.” Summer snapped.

“You little… C’mon Su-Summer don’t, d-d-don…“

“Hey, YOU told ME to can it, so-” Summer ended it there.

Rick would have rolled his eyes but he would have passed out from the vertigo. Instead, he settled with just closing them and silently leaving the room to go find Beth and Jerry on his own.

 

* * *

 

 

Morty woke up the next morning, still sore and stiff and destroyed from what had happened to him. He hobbled to the bathroom, stumbled around with his PJs, and thanks some higher force he didn’t piss all over his PJs or the floor. He struggled with the soap dispenser, took at least four painkillers, and went downstairs.

Summer and Jerry were enjoying a simple breakfast of toast and oatmeal. Beth was usually at work by now, but usually Rick didn’t skip breakfast either.

“W-Where’s Rick?” Morty asked, sitting at the table and looking around for perhaps his own serving. He didn’t find much.

“Oh, erm, well.” Jerry started, looking to Summer, who looked appalled for a moment that Jerry was even considering asking her for help on this one. “Well Morty, champ, your Grandpa Rick decided to take a pretty long erm, I guess you’d call it a job?” Jerry looked back to Summer, who just shrugged and kept her eyes on her own food. “Yeah. He’s taking a pretty long job. And he said he’d be here for your graduation Morty, but he’d be gone for a few weeks.”

Summer did spare a few seconds to pin those observant eyes on Morty, cataloguing his reaction to the news.

“O-Oh..” was all Morty had to say on the matter.

“He’s seriously gonna be back in like, a week Morty. He’ll be fine.” Summer added a little padding, seeing Morty slowly deflate at the table.

“Yeah sport! He’ll be fine out there, and think about it, this gives you all the time in the world to start looking at perhaps some schools you wanna look into applying to?” Jerry was trying to help.

“Hmm.” Morty felt trapped in his “Human Male” enclosure

“It’s just, you know, your mom’s pretty excited to see what you’re going to do with your life after you graduate, and I know Summer’s had a late start-“ a topic that was usually skirted around and caused Summer to shoot Jerry a look that caused him to flinch. “B-But, uh, we just, we have some high hopes for you son.”

“Dad!” Summer hissed.

Morty removed himself from the table. “I-I-I think I’ll do that now then, y-you know? I’ll erm, be in my room, so.” Not that his room would feel any less cramped. But maybe he could sleep away the days until he graduated school and was forced to take on the role of ‘Human Adult Male’ and perhaps forego Rick and Morty, a hundred years, Rick and Morty forever.

 

 

Forever.


	5. Dumped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Rick's absence, Morty learns how to deal with all of this spare time he's been given. He handles it pretty gracefully until he fucks it all up for himself with an old recording of Rick's Flesh Curtain days.

One week in and Morty felt like he was going insane.

 

He thought he’d feel the same way he did when Rick left on an adventure into martyrdom. This was less wading in the shallows of Beth’s growing alcoholism and skirting around Jerry’s ego than somehow dealing with the presence of Rick even in this empty house. It was so overbearing, that while everyone pretended it wasn’t some kind of lingering residue that coated everyone’s words, in all actuality, it was heavy on everyone’s minds.

This held the same gravity of anxiety that curled in the pit of Morty’s stomach like a viper. But it was less trying to recreate Rick out of nothing but smells and memories, and more wondering if Rick was trying to erase Morty from all of his. Everyone was pushing Morty to graduate school and, in turn, graduate from Rick, and become a normal human who went to school, got into debt and paid taxes.

 

Morty wasn’t sure he’d live past thirty in a life like that.

 

Beth had come up to visit Morty later the same day Rick had left to let him know that Rick WOULD be coming back. They had hugged it out a bit, a mutual understanding that Rick was the glue that kept each of them from crumbling apart. Two addicts to the same drug.

 

* * *

 

 

Two weeks in and Morty was just bored.

 

He could wiggle his fingers now, though it was in a constant state of either too tingly to want to deal with, or too sore to even try. But it was a start. It meant that Rick hadn’t attached it wrong. Maybe the only thing he’d ever have as a reminder would be a new set of nightmares and the small scar around his shoulder.

Summer came up every so often to check on Morty, as he wasn’t leaving his room too much. It was too tempting to wander around Rick’s lab, and honestly if Rick was doing what he suspected, it was probably a good idea to just go along with it.

“He’s gonna come back Morty, you don’t have to be so melodramatic,” Summer muttered from Morty’s bed. Her head and back were on the mattress and her legs were pressed up against the wall. She looked bored too, mostly with Morty’s behavior, but also with the way Jerry kept enjoying himself far too much during this month, and how much Beth was just going through the motions.

“Y-y-yeah no I know... I-I-I just, you know I don’t know if, if Rick is gonna do anymore, erm, traveling wi-with me, after I don’t, you know, after I don’t have school?” He shrugged, sitting up on the other side of the bed, his back against the wall and as he looked down at Summer.

“Maybe, seems weird that Grandpa Rick would just dump you once you’re out of high school.”

“He’s not dumping me.”

“You sure are acting like he is.”

“Shut up, Summer! L-l-look if you don’t wanna, you know, if you’re gonna make fun of me you can, just, you can-“

“Holy SHIT Morty,” Summer was laughing as she held up her hands “I didn’t realize I’d hit a nerve with that, oh my God.” She shook her head and stretched a little “So, I mean, what you think Grandpa’s gonna, just, what? Not adventure anymore once you’re in college? Wouldn’t it be safer for him to just take you along then too? It’s not like it’s any different than what he does now.”

“Y-yeah.” Morty shrugged. He tapped along slowly on his keyboard, looking and failing to find different schools. None of them sounded interesting. “I just figured, you know, maybe if he’s gonna try and make a-a-a clean break, I should learn to kinda, deal with Earth...”

Summer nodded and yawned “Yeah, maybe.”

 

There was a silence that hung in the room for a bit as they both realized the other wouldn’t last too long on Earth after what Rick had done to their lives. Summer would at least make it to her mid-life crisis.

 

“So are you applying to anything interesting?” Summer finally asked, wanting to clear the room from their silent revelations.

“Actually I’ve been add-adding a lot of things like beauty schools? I-I-I don’t know, I just want letters to come in so that, you know th-they-the- so I don’t get bothered anymore.” Morty closed his laptop and thumped his head against the wall. “I’m so bored Summer.”

“Yeah, now you get why I hated being left behind.”

 

* * *

 

Week three was uneventful.

 

Morty was officially out of school. He had another four weeks before his graduation ceremony.

He came out of his room more mostly because he could weakly grab things and use them with his dead-arm. Beth and Jerry both hovered around Morty while he ordered his robes and both of them discussed a class ring.

“I skipped mine personally,” Summer muttered from the table, which got a stern look from Jerry,

“Well I think it’s important to have memorabilia from your good ole` days,” Jerry added a little smugly, which caused Beth to roll her eyes and just leave the ring magazine to Morty.

“You should do what you want honey. It’s your day.”

Morty skipped the ring too. He wasn’t sure if he wanted a little reminder of a place he was hardly in and hated being in most of the time. He was sure he didn’t want a reminder of the false front he put on for everyone to go wander the cosmos without any inhibitions. He filled in the order for his robes, then he excused himself from the table, and for the first time, decided to wander around towards Rick’s side of the home.

He actually just explored the garage.

It was warm and balmy, the summer heat merciless in the un-air-conditioned part of the home. Morty explored the few shelves, all of them containing boxes upon boxes of things he knew all too well. His fingers traced along the dusty shelves, cool to the touch despite the hot air they’d been left in. Morty was glad to know that he didn’t have the same drowning feeling he did the last time he was in here when Rick was gone indefinitely. It felt more like tracing back along a book that was ending too soon. Rather than seeing it through to its end, he’d rather re-read the book from the beginning and just pretend the back cover wasn’t just around the corner.

Something caught his eye in one of the bottom shelves. There was a roundish disk that looked something along the lines of the holo-projector that he’d attempted to show off to Jessica so many years back. Morty grabbed for it and pulled it out, holding the little saucer shaped thing in his hands. The holo-projector he thought he had his hands rolled out seconds later, and he scooped that up too.

 

Fuck it, he could keep these as memorabilia from the ‘good ole days’.

 

When Morty wandered back up to his room he sat on his bed, the round silver ball to his left, and the silver disk to his right. He picked at the disk, it sat heavy in his hand. It had a light almost crystal like orb in the center of it, it also held around it several different holes and surprisingly one of them looked like an auxiliary jack. It had a ring around its widest part that looked to be made of the same crystal material. On the bottom was a singular button in the middle, parallel to where the crystal orb was on the other side.

Morty bit at his lips a little before finally before pushing the button along the middle. The ring around the middle and the crystal along the top started to glow. A fuzzy image was being projected from the top before finally it cleared up and a light blue hologram of Birdperson standing in front of a microphone appeared. He was leaning forward, wings expanded and saying something. It was muted. Seconds later the image zoomed out, leaving Morty to look at Birdperson on vocals and Squanchy on drums which left Rick on bass. Morty could turn the hologram around and he’d see all of them from a 360 view.

He set it aside if only to test out a theory as to why it had no sound. He fumbled with his desk, finally grabbed for a pair of headphones, went back to his bed and crammed them into what looked like the standard auxiliary port.

Sure enough a muffled sound came from the headphones and when Morty put them on his head, heard the sounds of the infamous Flesh Curtains filling his head. They were something else, Birdperson and Rick shared vocals once or twice but BP mostly took on the lyrics. He had such a monotone voice it was sort of interesting to hear him sing. Squanchy was a monster on the drums which was amazing to watch with his small arms and janky motions.

 

Rick though…

 

Rick’s fingers slapping at each string on the bass, the deep rich tones that traced along each song etched themselves into Morty’s bones. The quick and deft way his hands trailed along the neck of the guitar, they felt like Morty’s own heart-strings being tooled around and plucked. He smiled while watching them play. At one point Squanchy set fire to his drumsticks and murdered his drum-set. Another point Birdperson flew over the crowd singing, pulling a corkscrew in the air only to land safely back on stage. Rick dove into the crowd towards the end and played his guitar on the wave of hands that carried him along.

It was a few hours by the time the entire show was over. A live concert trapped inside this device...

 

* * *

 

 

By week four Rick finally came home.

 

It was in the middle of the night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep. He kept his word, being there for Morty’s stupid graduation, which was honestly far enough away that he could have stayed out a bit longer. He was going to go to straight to his room. Intending to keep himself at arms distance from Morty. But Rick was never good at playing by the rules, even the ones he set for himself. Which was good because he already had his hands around Morty’s doorknob.

An addiction.

When he saw Morty, laying in his bed, splayed out under rippled bedsheets, eyes closed with a single earbud placed in his ear, the holo-projection of one of The Flesh Curtains intergalactic tours playing just loud enough to hear in the silence of the sleepy house, Rick sucked in a breath.

He’d hold it somewhere in his tarred over lungs, let it stick to the walls before finally releasing it.

Rick should have known that absence would only make Morty’s sappy little heart grow fonder.

Rick also wondered if there was a point in them both denying it anymore.

He’d wonder it late in his own room.

He’d wonder it up till the point he was cumming into his hand with his other elbow over his eyes, the backs of his eyelids painted in the pink and purple hues that Morty’s body reflected just a month ago.

 


	6. Reunited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty finally confronts Rick about his recent departure and Summer finally catches on to some underlying issues in the Smith house.

Rick was sitting at the dining room table for breakfast like he’d never fucking left.

 

He was sitting next to Morty’s empty chair, where he always sat. He didn’t say hi. Didn’t say hello, or glad to be back, or how are you. He just glanced up from his food when Morty came into the room, nodded, made a small grunt and when back to eating. Beth and Summer were talking back and forth about apartment hunting.

Summer had gotten a job out of town, far enough away that she didn’t have to hear about how she wasn’t going to school day in and day out, but close enough that if she fucked up she could scuttle back into the house. She didn’t think she’d be fucking up anytime soon, but you never knew. Summer was as fickle as Rick was for staying committed to one thing for very long.

“I’m just so excited for you honey, and honestly you’ll have enough spare time that you can look into a school,” Beth smiled and offered Rick a few more pancakes, which he gladly accepted. “Morning, Morty!” she chirped as she spotted her son.

“Hey mom...” Morty’s attention drifted to Rick, a small glare forming on his face, “When did you get in?” Morty sniped at Rick, who looked up and took a nice long drink of Orange juice.

“LaaAAUAAate.” It dropped all conversation in the room like a deadly guillotine blade to cut the heads off the hydra of questions Morty had already conjured.

Being properly shut down, Morty took up his seat next to Summer and grabbed for his own serving sullenly.

“So champ, got any plans this weekend?” Jerry asked, around his own frustrated glares that he was periodically shooting at Rick. Jerry had thought for a moment that Morty and him were on the same wave length. Both cramped by Rick, and feeling like Rick was using their resources. “You know we could use you this weekend, maybe come help Summer find a new place to live?”

“U-um, I mean, maybe but I think I kinda, wanna just, ma-ma-may, just, I might just stay here and get ready for the graduation thing?”

“Isn’t that in another month?” Rick quipped, watching Morty with a raised brow.

Summer was watching him as well, seeing the vague desire to hit Rick with his own car wash over Morty’s face.

“Yeah.” Morty tried to have the same deadly force Rick did in shutting the conversation down, but honestly it fell flat and instead sounded more like he was upset that graduation was around the corner.

“H-Hey well, I mean I think it’s a good idea that you and Rick spend some time maybe, this weekend? It’s been a while since you had any adventures, and I know that you won’t have much more time.” Beth offered.

“W-Why not?” Morty asked, suddenly gripped with panic that maybe there was a conversation about Rick making a more than expected break out from Morty’s life.

“Well sweetie we sort of assumed that once you got into college, Rick would let you keep to your studies. Right? Dad?” Beth turned to Rick who sat up, looked Morty over and then turned to Beth, a lazy little smile on his face.

“Well, Beth, you’re probably right about letting Morty live his life, but I-I-I-I mean I can’t guaranteeEAUch that M-Morty won’t ask me to go on some kind, kinda, ah, wacky adventure.” Rick sat up from the table, grabbing his plate and smiling to Beth, “Thanks for breakfast sweet-heart.”

Morty hated how fucking right Rick was. He hated how good this bacon was, and how much he wanted to eat it, and how much Rick made everything in his mouth bitter and cold including all the retorts he had to swallow down.

 

 

Jerry, before getting into the car with Beth and Summer, took Morty to the side and placed a hand on his shoulder, getting down a little to his level.

“Hey champ.” He smiled warmly and nodded to the garage “So, about Rick... You know if you feel like you need space. I understand, probably better than anyone else. You can talk to me if you need to.”

Honestly Jerry was in his own way trying his best. But Morty felt a little transparent and exposed and took it more as the idea that maybe he hated Rick for being around the way Jerry did.

Really Morty hated Rick for knowing how to push him away long enough to make him want him so bad it hurt, and then came back just in time for the wound to never fully heal over. Just a smile and a snarky remark that demand Morty fall into step with Rick.

“Thanks Dad.”

“No problem Morty.” Jerry patted Morty on the shoulder and then was out of the door.

 

* * *

 

 

The house felt too empty.

There was a silence that buzzed in Morty’s ear at the lack of Summer playing a low song in her room, or getting ready for her work. There was no Beth cooking in the kitchen or getting the house clean, or even just coming and going from work. No Jerry mumbling around the house as he tried to understand how the hell to ‘reach the youth’ with his new ad. He didn’t have the same position he did before, but when he was hired to another advertising firm, the entire family had let out a tense breath.

Morty, not sure what to do with himself decided now was as good a time as any to just retire back to his room.

That lasted for all of about an hour before he finally got bored and then went back downstairs. He’d been in and out of his room for a month now, he didn’t want to be cooped up in it more. Plus it felt like Rick was winning a shitty argument and Morty didn’t want that either. So instead he moved to the office, playing a few games on the computer. That lasted until around dinner when he finally pulled himself away to make something to eat.

Which was poor timing on Morty’s end, because there was Rick, just sitting on the sofa watching Alf, some shitty episode that wasn’t even that good. But then again, we’re talking Alf here. Morty stopped at the living room and just watched Rick for a bit.

Rick was trying very hard to just ignore Morty, not really wanting to get ‘into it’ and once more demanding Morty just keep up, keep in step with Rick and not to make a scene. When he finally was forced to say something, because Morty was just _looking_ at him, he turned, bored and nodded at him.

“What’s up, what do you waaAAUANT?”

“What do you- you, I mean, w-why did you go Rick?” Morty stammered, still never quite sure how to handle Rick’s lackadaisical attitude towards confrontation. It always felt like uneven footing.

“I had a-a job Morty, sheesh, it’s not like I gotta take you with me e-everywhere I go.”

“That’s, not.. I-I-I mean you did it right after I got hurt a-and you’ve been doing this weird, bailing thing these past months a-and-“

“Bailing thing? What where I lead my own life Morty? Jeez you’re clingier to me than Jerry is with Beth, you know that right?”

“R-Rick you’re not, you know that’s not what this- all of this- what- what all of this is about!” Morty’s voice got a little louder, demanding the attention Rick was obstinately trying to deny.

“Yeah, you wanna tell me wha-what this is all about then Morty? HuUUOUUugh. Huh?” Rick finally muted the TV and turned to Morty. “Sounds like you’ve got a huge idea on what I’m doing a-a-and why I’m doing them.”

“Well I mean, I don’t know R-Rick I mean, you kinda, you...” Morty could feel his face getting redder. “You take me on this stupid beach vacation, a-a-and then you just, something bad happens and then all of the sudden y-you, I mean I get hurt and then you get drunk and just take off!”

“I had a job M-Morty.” A lie, but Morty didn’t have any proof.

“I-I-If you did you would have taken me b-because I’m still a shield for you jackass!” Morty tapped his chest and then took a step closer “I-If you really were working, you would have grabbed me, b-but more to the point you’re just, I don’t know you’re always doing this to me lately! Yo-you, Rick, you just, you take off and then you come back a-a-and I can’t, I can’t fucking keep up!”

“Yeah, well no one asked you to, Mooorty, you know, maybe you can just, go to school and get on with your life like you’re supposed to.” Rick hissed, taking the remote and trying to drown Morty out with Alf of all things.

“H-how the fuck do you expect me to do that if you dragging my ass around just when you need me!?”

“Christ Morty you think, m-maybe I tooOOUUook this job so I could see if I could do this shit without you? Huh? Maybe I _don’t_ need you around huh? You ever think of that you little shit?” Rick stood up and towered over Morty. “M-Maybe you’re just some over emotional bag of terrible life cho-choices and neediness aa-a-and maybe I don’t need that shit in my life an-any more huh? Moooorty? You’re not the center of my universe ok? A-and you should take me out of yours.”

 

The TV was screaming in the background to fill in the space Morty and Rick left silent between the both of them.

 

“It’s because of… Of the dream huh?” Morty said, hardly able to be heard over the show. Rick heard it well enough though and rolled his eyes

“I don’t give a shit about your weird ass dream.”

“I’m... I-I-I know that’s not true.”

“You don’t know shit, Morty.” Which wasn’t true and Rick hated that the only way he knew to keep Morty off of his mind and lips was to beat him into submission through insults.

“I-I-I know I’m fucked up, a-a-and that it’s wrong a-and I don’t know what to do anymore Rick. I-I-I keep trying to, to be normal. I-I-I keep telling myself that maybe, you know, o-one of these days It’ll stop. You know?” Morty was quickly rounding in on himself and honestly Rick wasn’t going to stop him. Maybe he could let Morty put himself into his place and that would be the end of it. Hell maybe Morty would think it was his own idea to shut himself up and Rick could get out of this whole thing scott free.

Morty continued after a moment.

“I don’t. I don’t know Rick I just, I-I-I can’t though? I keep thinking that I’m gonna be able to just get over this fucking gross part of me b-but I can’t?! A-and I hate it, but I don’t know what to do about it anymore.” Rick was starting to get a little uncomfortable, swallowing a little harder as his face eased itself from a guilt inducing glare to a more irritated concern.

“I w-wake up wondering why I can’t be like everyone else. B-but here I fucking am, s-si-still Morty Smith, the gross piece of shit who wants to fuck his grandpa, aa-and now you know that, or you knew it in my dream b-but now you know it in real life too a-and you keep pretending like maybe it was all a big dumb joke but.” Morty gripped at his hair and pulled a little, “It’s not, Its fucking... I don’t even know how to tell a-anyone about it Rick.” His voice cracked and he looked…

 

Fuck.

 

He was sobbing, one arm was wrapped around his middle and the other pulling at his hair. Morty looked all of 14 again, encapsulating every inch of his neurotic attitude towards something big and awesome and terrifying and unstoppable. The very things Rick laughed in the face of and invited Morty to do.

Rick couldn’t even bring himself to fake laughing at this.

“Rick I-I-I’m so fucking, I’m so-sorry I just. I don’t know what to do a-and I can’t stop a-and I wanna b-but I don’t think I can, a-and I feel so fucking l-lost.”

Just as Morty felt like he was going to shake apart and let his pieces be washed away by the sobs he was failing at holding back, Rick’s arms came around him to hold him together. Morty let his own hands fly around Rick and just held onto him. He held onto his coat like the child he once was, and silently begged Rick to just fix it for him.

Rick and Morty sat there together for a while, letting Morty sob it out.

“Shh… baby, I got you, grandpa’s got you.”

When Rick finally pulled away he was still too close. Much too close. Morty new it and he could almost taste the new tension that was between them.

“You’re a shit, you know that right, Morty?” He whispered, “You know how fucking hard this is for me?”

“Yeah… I-I-I mean I think I do, actually?” Morty whispered back.

There was a second that passed before Morty moved forward to close the gap that was between their lips.

 

Neither of them had the will to tell the other no anymore.

 

Morty’s lips were soft and too hot, pressing in just a bit too hard into Rick’s slightly colder and rougher lips. Morty aimed too high, catching most of Rick’s upper lip. Rick’s mouth was a bit more skilled in all of this, so Rick worked to correct the angle a bit, leaning his head down. Morty tried to move with him and instead they smooshed foreheads a bit.

Morty pulled away and laughed a bit. Rick snorted and just…

He took Morty’s red eyes and nose and cheeks, his bright and giddy and slightly terrified smile.

Together again laughing at something big and awesome and terrifying and wrong.

Rick leaned in kiss Morty this time, grabbing the corner of his lips and then his cheek and then forehead and then lips again, getting them a little easier this time. Morty tried to press into it, needy and wanting, like he was trying to make up for four years of kissing. Rick winced, cupped Morty’s jaw and pulled him back a bit.

“We got all the time in the world baby, slow your roll.”

Morty blushed a little and nodded

“Y-yeah?”

“Yeah. Remember, a hundred years you and me.”

 

* * *

 

 

Kissing got easier the more and more they did it. Which, since they both were going to say fuck it to the rules, and since Rick was tired and old and without any sense of shame anymore, he enjoyed stealing kisses in the worst ways.

Leaning in and kissing Morty’s neck when they were in the kitchen and Beth was around the corner; kissing on top of the washer and dryer while in the garage. Rick left a nasty hicky on Morty’s neck one night when they were coming back from a job. Morty and Rick both were making up for lost time.

It was probably one of the better weeks in Morty’s life. He felt calm, collected, and at ease with himself.

This of course came crashing down when Summer walked in to see Morty’s hips held by Rick, another hand in Morty’s hair and Rick’s mouth on her brother’s shoulder. Morty’s face as red as a cherry and moaning over the sound of the washer knocking against the concrete floor.

 

  
Morty opened his eyes long enough to see her disgusted look before she left.

 


	7. Departure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty is given an out from his life when Rick comes to see him before a family meeting. The rest is them just trying to figure out what to do with their lives now that it's all been turned upside down.

Rick came into Morty’s room at 3:18 am.

 

Morty was already awake, sitting in his bed and holding his legs to himself. He wanted to run since the second he heard Jerry make his little announcement, but he knew he’d have nowhere to go, and Rick had made it clear when they first kissed that this was not going to be what Morty was hoping for. When the door cracked and Rick’s form was the one in the doorway, his chest decided it was ok to allow in a small breath and cease suffocating him.

“Two duffle bags. Make sure its shit you can’t live without.” Rick looked at the doors to everyone else’s room.

Morty said nothing as he filled one bag with clothes, every shirt he’d need, and jeans. He filled it with shoes and jackets. The other he filled with sentimental trash Rick didn’t have time to convince Morty to ditch. Most of it was stuff Rick never took back after Morty had stolen it. The holo-recording of Rick’s Flesh Curtain tour, the holo-projector of all the stars and planets and cosmos a scrapbook Beth made for both Summer and Morty of their family together of all the mundane things they had done before Rick stumbled into their lives, a few other things from his room, including chargers for his phone and laptop.

Silence still passed between the both of them as Rick grabbed one of the duffle bags and Morty grabbed the second. They made their way to the garage. Rick was surprisingly nonchalant about opening doors, tossing shit around and not even flinching when he knocked into a table, causing the collection of TV remotes to crash to the floor.

Rick tossed Morty’s bags into the back, where his own bag was already sitting. Morty took his familiar seat as co-pilot and strapped himself in. Rick ignored his own strap, as per usual, and clicked the garage door open.

“Don’t sweat it kiddo.” Rick huffed, sounding almost disappointed. Morty was leaning back in his chair like he might be able to make himself one with the fabric, willing himself to become invisible for when his family barreled down into the garage and either forced Rick away from him or finally locked Morty up for his deviancy.

Despite it taking about thirty minutes, the Smith Family clock didn’t click over to 3:19 AM until Rick broke atmosphere.

 

It was 4:00 AM when Morty’s phone started to buzz in his pocket. It was Beth. It sat heavy in his hands, sending a dull ache up to his shoulders as the vibration rattled his bones, setting his hand on fire. The picture he had for his mother was her smiling in the living room, giving him a wave as she read over a medical book that was gifted to her just a few days before. It was calm and genuine, and it betrayed every tone he knew he’d hear from her voice if he picked up.

“I won’t stop you.” Rick muttered. He wasn’t sure if Morty was keeping his line dead because of some fear that Rick might abandon him if he did, or if it was because he genuinely was alright with what they were doing.

“I don’t. I don’t want t-t-to hear it right now.” Morty admitted as he killed the call, throwing his mother’s concerns to voicemail. He powered down his phone, throwing the both of them into the darkened backend of the car.

 

Nothing was said for hours.

 

Morty at some point unclipped his own seatbelt and leaned his chair back to catch some sleep.

Rick stayed awake and drove them as far away as his body would let him.

It was Morty’s cellphone that woke Rick up from the steering wheel. “You have 23 messages and 3 saved messages. First message…” Morty pushed the volume down a bit to cover up Beth’s tears. They missed Rick’s ears entirely and buried themselves somewhere in his chest. He couldn’t hear the words behind them, but he could hear his scared and angry and confused little girl through her sharp breaths and wobbled words.

Morty’s face was twisted into something ugly and raw and Rick was pretty sure Morty didn’t know he was watching, otherwise he’d try and put up a strong-boy-poker face as well. The next call was Jerry trying to talk some sense into Morty, explaining something in simple terms. Morty face went from conflicted to just angry. Beth called again and Morty didn’t even sit through the entire thing. He deleted another 7 without even listening to them. He paused when Summer came on the line. It was short and Rick couldn’t hear any of it. Morty hung the phone up and crammed it into his pocket.

He could hear Morty’s soft and private sobs and Rick wanted nothing more than to take him into his arms and just protect him from all of this. But that was not how life worked, not when he was the reason this was happening. Rick could tell Morty it was all going to be ok, but it wasn’t. This was their life now and either Morty was going to ask Rick to bring him back, or he was going to have to learn to cut out this part of him now.

Morty finally wiped his eyes clean and caught Rick staring at him. Rick was quiet and Morty eventually sighed and smiled. “S-Sorry, i-i-its gonna take some, you know, getting used to.” He sniffed loudly and leaned back in the chair, a hand ran through his hair.

“I can take you back whenever you want to go Morty.” Rick was not gentle about it, it was not a question as to if he wanted to, it was a statement as to when. It was a matter of ‘When you finally pull your head out of your ass and realize you wanna fuck an eighty four year old man who’s also your god damn grandpa, then I’ll take you back home, no questions asked and no resentment when you fucking hate me.’

“I know.” It was as if Morty could read his thoughts, and was silently choosing not to respond.

 

* * *

 

 

Things went on like that for a week. Morty eventually took the wheel from Rick, driving them around aimlessly, the same way Rick had. The both of them were trying to learn how to stand on this quickly melting land. Both of them unsure where the other stood. Morty unsure how long Rick would play into this, and Rick unsure how long until Morty realized the mistake he made.

But slowly things changed.

One day Rick and Morty stopped at a diner and got something easy on both of their stomachs, and Rick halfway through asked Morty about some kind of complex tool he’d been working on.  
  
“Something to portal the ship around” Rick muttered.

Morty pointed out that the power on the portal gun would probably get zapped, but he’d only used a quarter of the power in his car, so it might be possible to add a kind of warp-drive, but instead of bringing them to faster than light speed, it could simply create a kind of portal and deposit them elsewhere.

Rick was impressed with the notion, but he realized that Morty was overcomplicating it a bit. He then set to work stealing as many napkins as he could to write the new theory down. Morty helped where he could, and while Rick never really thanked him for it, he didn’t shoot him down either. By the end of their meal, they had spent five hours in the dive and covered two booths with notes.

Another day Rick pulled the car to the side and they got a small motel for a few hours. Rick slept most of the time and Morty took a nice hot shower that lasted a few hours. The shower was odd, a sphere you walked into that was cut off at the top, looking like human sized wine glass. The water shot out from all angles around as well as a steady stream from the ceiling down onto Morty’s head. There was a drain at the bottom of the ‘tub’ that was just a large mesh. At first Morty was afraid of falling through and into it, but the hot green water that washed over him took all those fears away. The water smelled minty but also a little gingery as well.

When he came out Rick had an episode of Ball fondlers on. Morty sat next to Rick in just his towel. Rick looked him up and down. Said nothing and finally moved his arm to the back of the sofa. Morty curled in on his side and they stayed like that till their time was up.

 

They drove through so many things.

 

An asteroid field where the rocks that floated in free-form were made of deep blood red crystal, each of them slowly crashing into each other and causing little ruby drops to fly out like a fruit-punch rain. Rick moved through it as easy as breathing.

They flew through a huge expansive nebula that was every color under the sun swirled together in gas tendrils. Through it sparked what looked light streaks of lightning, zipping past and around their ship. It made no sound, it caused no fury within the nebula, but it caused a small gasp to come out from Morty that warmed Rick’s body.

It caused his own smile to curve on his weary lips.

Rick above all loved to impress Morty. He lived to impress anyone, a little god-complex he never wanted to curb. But Morty… Morty held a wonder and awe in his eyes that caused Rick’s heart to play a little faster than it normally did. He loved doing this for Morty, showing him parts of the world no one else could. While he knew that might be the reason that Morty’s disgusting obsession with Rick was the way it was; why it was the reason no one else could ever come close to the bar Rick set so high, he was also selfish enough and indulgent enough to not give a single fuck.

This was his drug of choice and fuck you if you thought he’d stop taking the hit, especially now when he’d been told it was find to partake.

They took a stop at an intergalactic zoo. They looked at every species known to the Intergalactic Species Conservation Act. Or the ISCA, which was set up to basically preserve the culture and life-style of one of every creature in the species, before the federation had claimed their territory.

 

“It’s set up by the g-g-graruUUAAeay aliens Morty. You know, sh-short and big eyes. They come and abduct aliens from their homes and p-put them in here.” Rick explained as they passed a pair of Federation drones, who, in their enclosure were just a pair of bug-like aliens, enjoying a meal together at a table. “T-They have literally everything in here a-and the feds can’t say shit about it. It’s also how I got a hold of the library of languages our neuro-translators have.”

“You know I kinda wondered why all the aliens we came across spoke English? I-I-I was just never able to find, you know, where you might have put it? You know? In me?” Morty smirked.

“Hah, well at least you didn’t think they all just naturally spoke it. Nah dawg, you remember those small as fuck nano-bots I put into your blood stream Morty?” Rick was grinning as they turned a corner.

“The ones that turned me into a car?” Morty sounded less amused.

“Yeah those, anyhow I have them as a translator, a-a-a way better version of google translate. Your ears automatically translate what’s heard in real time, and your speeEAAOOAEech is translated in real time as well. You hear English because what you’re saying is in another language and you’re hearing it. But nah you’ve been speakin Gupstoo the entire time!!”

Morty paused and shook his head “That’s kinda, that’s pretty wild Rick.”

“Yeah, well a-anyhow this place has the largest library of the known languages out there in the world. These little nerd-lords are all about archiving and organization. N-Not about security and subtly. S-So naturally I cracked their shit and got all of it for myself.” Rick stopped in front of a terrarium and smiled.

“Yeah that’s, that’s pretty impressive Rick, I gotta say!” Morty looked at what was in there. A human male. Average looking, sitting in a recliner watching TV. The room looked like something set up in the 70s or so. The name was Billy. “H-huh, a-and they’re totally happy in there?”

Rick crossed his arms “Yeah I mean, poor asshole has everything paid for him, food delivered to his door, all the porn he could ask for. They even throw a whole line about family calling him and a girl to fuck once a month or so.” He shrugged “Guy doesn’t even know he’s in a cage.”

Morty swallowed thickly

“Kind of a fucked up metaphor huh Morty?”

 

* * *

 

 

They finally stopped.

 

Rick was tired, and Morty was trying to fall asleep in the seat when he finally said he wanted a god damn motel. He wanted to sleep in a bed.

They found a shitty place to park it for the evening and when they got to the counter, Rick was about to set the clerk on fire for informing them that the only room they really had left is a one bed hourly.

Morty was the one who paid for them both, and he was the one that drug Rick away from the counter. Rick muttered about how this was some racists ass bullshit and they’d never pull this kind of trash on a Loopsitor and how it was just because he looked like he had simple biology. Morty smiled.

“Y-yeah probably Rick, it’s ok.”

The room was small as hell. It had a bed, it had no windows and it had a door that lead into a closet sized room that just had a hole in the floor to shit or piss into. Nothing else.

“What a shithole.” Rick snarled as he leaned out of the door to lock and arm his car. “I’ll taaAOOAAake the ship.” He muttered, heading towards it before Morty grabbed at his labcoat.

“R-Rick it’s fine. Just stay here, i-i-its ok.”

Rick had got a hard line for a mouth for a moment before he finally gave in and agreed to Morty’s terms. He was too tired to argue.

Morty sat on the edge of the bed and checked his phone again. It was a daily ritual for him to eradicate his texts. Leaving every complaint he should have been facing to be left in some digital wasteland he couldn’t look back on. He thought about blocking their numbers but that felt too easy and he knew Rick would elude to as much when Morty wasn’t expecting it.

He did text Summer. It was small. It usually said something like ‘I’m alive, I’m happy. I’m sorry’ and that was about it. Over time it was more ‘No I’m not telling you where we are, but I got some pretty nice milkshakes at this restaurant. Anyhow are you ok?’

He still had to text ‘I know you’ll kill him if you see him. He knows too.’

But for tonight it was just ‘Going to bed. I hope you get the apartment Summer. You should move out when you can.’

Rick had read most of the texts Morty got when Morty ran in for snacks in some store. It wasn’t Rick’s fault Morty never locked his phone. The texts from Beth were the worst. Just a walls of ‘Sweety its ok. You don’t have to go’ ‘Morty baby please come back’ ‘He can’t hurt you here’ ‘I know it seems like this is the right thing but it’s not.’

Jerrys were something else entirely. ‘It’s ok champ. Please we miss you’ ‘I can protect you if you’re scared’ and ‘We all want you to come home’ which slowly devolved into ‘Morty can’t you see what you’re doing here!?’

 

Summer deserved more credit than Rick ever gave her.

 

Her texts lined up along the terms of ‘If Grandpa Rick ever shows his wrinkled ballsack of a face around here, I’m gonna take one of his guns and level it to his head Morty.’ and ‘Please don’t fucking mention his name Morty.’ and ‘If you wanna fuck someone smarter and older than you, there’s like, a million professors around here that’d be willing I’m sure. Who aren’t your grandpa.’  
They’d been a little more ‘I don’t think you know what you’re doing Morty, but I literally can’t stop you, so I guess there’s that.’ And ‘Pretty sure if there ever a thing to unite Mom and Dad forever it’s this little incident so gratz on that Morty.’ lately.

Still too harsh and still jabbing at an open wound, but not as bad as it once was.

Rick finally sat himself down in the bed, a threadbare A-line covering his chest and a pair of boxers. He laid down and covered his eyes.

“Y-you can still go back you know M-Morty...” Rick sighed, before reaching down for his flask and taking a hard pull from it.

“I’m not going to.” Morty admitted as he turned his phone off and let it drop to the floor with his pants and his shirt.

“That’s a fucking stupid choice on your end Morty.”

“Probably.”

Morty started on his end of the bed, but slowly he turned around and watched as Rick took another deep swallow from his flask.

“D-Do you want me to, to you know, to go?” Morty mumbled after a bit.

“I expect you to.” Rick said between sips.

Morty is silent for a long while and then opened his mouth, letting the words suffocate in this throat till he tried again a few minutes later.

“Can.” One word “Are we.” two words,

“What Morty?”

“Am I still allowed to kiss you?”

Rick hated the words and he hated that he had to swallow them and deliver his own response. He wanted to do everything in his power to crush them, to kill them dead in their tracks because this had all gotten so out of hand. They’ve long since bailed on Morty’s graduation, something he’ll never get back, and now he was about to suck away the days Morty could be spending awkwardly asking some perky titted twenty something if he could kiss her…

Rick just watched him for a bit and then just deflated.

“I never said you couldn’t.”

Which was true. Rick had never once said that Morty couldn’t. There was just an unspoken reminder between the both of them that they were in this because they shouldn’t.

Morty moved in close and captured Rick’s lips in his own. His mouth tasted the acrid flavor of Rick’s poison of choice, and he breathed in the sour and bitter smell of his breath. Rick’s lips were cold and slightly cracked around the edges. It feels familiar and good though. Rick kissed his lips back, pressing their lips closer together, stealing away the kisses he should be giving to a girl his own age, stealing the warmth from Morty’s lips and taking it for himself.

 

A selfish fucking asshole.

 

The same selfish fucking asshole who wrapped his arms around Morty in the bed they were sharing. Morty rested his head on Rick’s arm and his own arm on Rick’s middle. It was the closest either had been towards each other in a long time. Morty fell asleep first. He’d been sleeping easier when Rick was in the room, and better when Rick was close. Rick watched him for a bit, moving the arm under Morty’s head after it started to fall asleep, and the one wrapped around Morty’s shoulder.

It traced the scar that was left when it had been ripped off.

It tangled itself in Morty’s hair.

It settled back down over Morty around the same time Rick’s own eyes grew heavy.

 

Morty never asked to be taken home. Even months later when Morty stopped getting phone calls.


	8. The Same'ole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick and Morty finally get back into the swing of things for adventuring. Morty proves himself to be a decent asset to Rick despite how rough things have been recently.

The job they had taken together was supposed to be easy.

 

But, then again, that was Morty’s life for you. Rick had in his arms a silver and black metal briefcase that was handcuffed to his wrist. In his other hand, he had a phasor gun that he used to shoot off another two rounds.

“M-Morty, look I’m gonna, you gotta, you y-y-you gotta blast em ok Morty? Grandpa’s gonna, gonna fuckin, I don’t know distract them or something! J-just keep them off my ass ok Morty?” Rick tossed the gun at Morty, who fumbled with it a bit before he finally peaked his head out from behind the crate they were taking refuge behind. Three blasts rang out. One of them almost hit Morty straight in the forehead, instead only singing his hair.

Rick hissed and just decided to say fuck it, gunning it as hard as he could for the adjacent hallway. Morty tried to cover for him but the gun-blast was loud and quick and aimed at the much more deadly force that was Rick Sanchez.

 

Time slowed.

 

Rick let out a scream, low and guttural like an animal wounded. He hit the ground with a deep thud that vibrated in Morty’s bones. There was a smatter of red where Rick was laying, his shoulder, leg and arm all had been hit. Morty barely had time to look over his shoulder and register that Rick was down.

The massive brutes down the hall ran forward, guns still pointed at Rick.

“S-STOP!”

Morty was out from his crate and over Rick in a second, his gun up and pointed at them, before he lowered it down to the ground, hesitating before tossing it over.

“M-Morty what the fuck a-are...” Rick took in a sharp breath and tried so very hard not to let out another scream. Morty pressed his fingers into a small green circle on the handcuffs. They popped open and released the briefcase and Rick at the same time. Morty had never been happier to share genetics with Rick than in that second.

“Morty y-you sack of shit don- don’t you fuckin-” Rick reached for the case, the monsters, ten feet tall and built like trucks, leveled all four of their guns at Rick once more, the light in their blasters starting to glow as they powered up.

But Morty couldn’t bring himself to care. He scooped Rick up into his arms and took off down the hall. Rick grabbed the case before Morty could get too far and the sound of gunfire was deafening as it trailed after them.

“Rick th-the ship! Where, where did you park the ship!?” Morty was stammering, running down every hall he could find, trying to keep those monsters at bay. The massive cargo ship they were running through was white and clean and sterile and well lit.

That was until there came the sudden sound of a garbled, “SECTOR BREACH AREA: 9696. DEADLY FORCE IS A-OK BUCKEROOS” The pristine white hallways went dim, massive red flashing lights twirling above ever door and hallway.

Rick huffed “F-FuuUUUucking hate Gippups.”

“N-not now Rick.” Morty hissed, keeping his back against the wall and just breathing. Rick flinched and his own hand reached down to grip at Morty’s shirt. The motion felt like his gnarled hands were gripping around Morty’s heart. He knew Rick was trying to save face, and he wanted more than anything to get the hell out of dodge.

“The ship Rick, please.”

“Y-yeah so-sorry Morty, yeah uh. I think I parked her in Hanger Block B-D” he smirked and laughed “You know for Big Dic-.”

“Rick shut up.” there was a rumble in the floor of large feet coming to gun them down. Morty felt trapped and scared and you’d think he’d have learned how to manage himself by now, but it never got any easier the longer he adventured with Rick.

Well it did actually, it got easier because Morty was better at not getting shot at, and he was better at advoiding traps and listening to Rick. But Rick was rarely the one getting shot at, so when he was bleeding in Morty’s arms, shaking and trying so hard to keep himself together for Morty, that’s what coiled around his throat and made him resist the temptation to breathe and risk getting Rick shot at.

When the footsteps trailed off, Morty finally let out a small breath and made a panicked run for the hanger.

 

Each corner he turned made his heart stop, worried he might run into another hulk of an alien, interested in shooting them both into smaller bits of their former selves. It wasn’t until they rounded the corner of the connecting hallway for the hanger that Morty had the misfortune of running into one, who immediately radioed in their location.

“Stop! Drop the case, and maybe we’ll let you live...”

“D-DoOOUGHuon’t like those odds.” Rick chuckled and Morty, for about three seconds, thought about just leaving Rick there, on the ground, and taking the ship back home. Sure he’d have to undergo some intense therapy, but maybe it was worth it…

Morty took a step back. The creature lifted its arms and leveled the guns to Morty’s head. Morty reached for the case, yanking it out of Rick’s tired and weak hands.

“W-Will, will you let us go?”

“Yeah sure small thing, whatever you want, just hand it over. C’mon I bet you don’t even know what’s in there.”

“Pl-plans for a medical strain to-to cure a new form of the common cold.” Morty snapped. Rick lifted a brow and patted Morty’s back with his good hand.

“H-HooOOUGHUhooly shit Morty, grats on you!”

“Y-You told me before we left Rick!” Morty whined, holding the case for himself. “Do you promise to let Rick and I go?!”

“Kid just Hand. It. Over.” The guns in the beast’s hands started to charge up, the lights along their edges glowing a deep crimson.

Morty turned on a dime and ran, holding up the case as a shield, which, to its credit, did work. It also just burned a hole through the metal exterior, and into the inside, which burned up all the important documents inside of it.

“F-FUCK MORTY, I-I-I GOT SHOT TO SHIT FOR NOTHING NOW?!” Rick asked when he saw the papers trail out of the open hole in the case “God DAMMIT Morty!”

Morty didn’t have the time or energy to fight back. He rounded another two hallways before finally seeing Hanger ‘Big Dick’ and running into it like a rabbit to a warren. Thankfully the ship was easy enough to spot in comparison to all the other uniform ships. Barreling towards it, he threw the door open, tossed Rick into the co-pilot seat and then hurtled himself into the driver’s seat

“D-Do you even knoOOUOOW what you’re doing Morty?” Rick feebly attempted to stop him, or at least take control of the wheel, but Morty was easily able to slap him off.

“R-Rick lemme, concentrate, we, we gotta-“

“THERE THEY ARE!!” several and counting, a title wave of those massive lumbering beasts filtered into the room, all with guns and all of them aimed at the ship.

“S-SHIT!” Morty screeched, pulling the car into a janky lift, it wobbled under his fingers. Thankfully Morty was quick on his toes. He spun the ship around in a 180 as smooth as Rick ever could, and tore off towards the exit. Several other ships from the hanger roared to life and angled themselves at Rick and Morty, their guns lighting up and firing two cannon blasts each. Morty was hit by one, the ship wobbling and letting out a massive cry of protest.

“Waytago M-morty.” Rick slurred, blood was coming out in waves on the seat, and it wasn’t until then that Morty realized his own soaked shirt was covered in blood. He didn’t have the time right now though, he had to get them out into airspace and out-run them. Three ships came after him while the rest of the troops stayed on the ground. Morty hooked the ship left and made a b-line for the door, just scrapping out of it and making it into the bright green and purple clouds that their little planet was nestled under.

Morty saw in the rear view that the three ships were hot on his ass, and he made a nose-dive down to try and get them to chase. Sure enough, they took the bait. He pulled the nose down even harder, watching the rust brown spires of stone that lined the ground come closer and closer, welcoming him into their deadly arms.

“Hold tight Rick.” Morty growled, as he reached forward and jammed his finger on a glowing button. He pulled a lever just next to him and out from the back came a white smoke, a fine flour powder poofed out in a spray behind him. He grabbed the wheel and pulled her up as hard as he could, the ship stalled a bit, unable to move forward with the inertia he was riding.

The two ships behind him on the other hand, they sped by him, unable to quite read him in the fog. They collided with the ground, their ships crumpling in on themselves before exploding outwards in a bright blue blast that actually gave Morty the speed he needed to break free of the white cloud he’d made for himself. Meeting him on the other side was the last ship. It opened fire as soon as Morty came into view.

Morty panicked and pulled the ship as hard as he could to the left, throwing them into a sort of corkscrew. The ship traced after them, launching off as many shots as it could. Morty hissed and straightened the ship out, pulling it up hard and hoping to, at the very least, break atmosphere. The ship was right on his ass though and wouldn’t relent. Its next two shots hit the hull of Rick’s ship and caused the entire vessel to rumble and wobble in the air. Morty growled, looked back and then, finally, angled his ship upright and cut the breaks, trying to throw it in reverse.

Rick was launched forward, and cracked his head against the dash. Morty didn’t have time to notice or apologize, not right now. The ship behind him trailed after only seconds later, the both of them nearly staring each other in the eye. Morty was free-falling. He reached down, grabbed at a lever and pulled the knob out, twisted it and jammed it back in, the trash-cans on the sides reversed, sat forward, glowed a bright deadly blue, and lobbed two massive cannon beams at the ship in front of Morty.

The ship was a rain of debris. Morty reversed the trash-cans again and then jammed both feet on the gas to try and throw them into the sky and get the hell out of dodge.

 

* * *

 

 

It didn’t look like they were being followed when Morty finally was greeted with the inky black blanket of space. He still waited a little longer before he even stopped the ship. He reached over after a moment to check Rick, who was still awake, mumbling a little under his breath, but still with him. The panic of staying alive was swallowed whole by the fact that he had risked Rick’s life, and fucked up the job, all to try and keep him safe. He should have just followed Rick’s cue, but then again, Rick probably knew the plan was fucked the second he got shot.

Morty parked the ship on a rather sizable asteroid and then killed the engine. God forbid anyone was tailing them and read for their signals.

“S`m fansy.. fanny.. fsy.” Rick mumbled, his head lulling to the side.

“C-Cmon Rick, c’mon what were you gonna say?” Morty asked as he clambered into the back of the ship and grabbed their shabby little first aid kit. “Fancy what?”

“Piloting M-M-Morty… s’good.”

Morty couldn’t spare the time to properly enjoy the fact that Rick complemented him on something that he probably would never admit while not fighting specifically with staying awake and alive. Out of the medical kit, Morty pulled out a tube, it was opened already but it would do. Morty remembered it fondly, it being the same cream that Rick stuffed into the hole he’d shot through Morty’s hand.

Morty shuffled around to the front of the ship, reaching down to take off Rick’s coat and belt

“M-Morty c’mon, n-not now…” Rick grumbled, and tried to fight with him. Morty huffed, and tried not to spare the five seconds to thank Rick for assuming that Morty would be willing to try and squeak in a first-time-fuck on Rick’s death bed.

“R-rick stop fussing...” Morty muttered, able to only just get Rick’s shirt off. He oozed what looked like a dark brown cream onto his fingers, took a deep breath, and without waiting, plunged them into the bullet hole in Rick’s shoulder and arm.

Rick screamed and it fucking killed Morty.

He wondered if Rick was used to it, which is why he didn’t flinch when others did it. When Morty did it. But god damn Morty wanted to throw up at seeing Rick’s body twist and try to scramble away from Morty like he was the source of every pain he’d felt compressed into one moment.

Morty reached a shaking hand out to rest on Rick’s face,

“H-hey, Rick, s-shh-shhh i-i-it’s gonna be ok. Ok?” He tried to swallow as much panic as he could that was spilling out with his words “’I-I’ve got you.”

Morty pooled more of the cream onto his fingers and took another deep breath before he smooshed it into the hole in Rick’s leg. The man howled and pressed himself against the chair to get away from him. Morty swallowed back every sorry he could possibly muster. Every apology he could think of, just to take back the pain he had to see Rick in.

Slowly though, inch by inch, the skin that was covered in the cream started to weave itself in double time. Muscle webbed its way inside the hole, bone fiber slowly grew together once more and over time even the skin patched itself back up.

 

When all was said and done, Rick was tiredly glaring at Morty and panting.

“Quick thinking,” was all he said.

Morty smiled and shrugged “I-I-I thought so.”

“Don’t jerk yourself off there Morty.” Rick groaned and rubbed at his face. “You get to drive home though. I’m fucking bushed, a-and we fucked up the drop so…”

“You sure?” Morty asked, slowly making his way over to the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, I mean, we dropped the case I think, a-and it got a fucking hole blown though it so...”

“I-I meant about driving.” Morty huffed, clipping himself in anyhow.

“W-Well, yeah, I meant what I said about your driving. It was fancy.”

Morty just glanced at Rick who gave him a ‘what?!’ shrug and nodded to the window. Morty smiled, rolled his eyes and made his way out of the asteroid field and to a motel a good few hundred miles away.

“I-It’s not a total loss I guess...” Rick said, finally reaching back to grab at case and some of the papers “I can, uh, I can probably work with this, most of this, synthesize my own strain.” He smirked and winked at Morty “Sell it for twice this shit was worth...”

“Well, g-good.”

 

It was good. Things actually, despite it all, were pretty good right now.


	9. Accidents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick learns a new and messy fact about Morty, and Morty hates the fact that he can't find a private restroom in all of space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's the illusion to rape mention in this chapter, so if that's not your thing than I totally get it and you can skip this chapter. It's one of the few where you won't be missing anything plot relevant.

There are things about Morty that Rick doesn’t know, and it always takes him by surprise.

 

He hates when he finds them, because he feels like he should have seen them sooner. With all his genius and intellectual prowess, and the ability to deconstruct each whine, stutter, and twitch of Morty’s face, Rick felt like he should be able to know every inch of Morty the way he knows every inch of his own hands.

But he doesn’t. Sometimes it’s nice, learning these new things. Like when he learned that Morty smoked weed every so often. It was a pleasant surprise that he was actually secretly impressed Morty was able to keep under wraps from him. Rick had demanded a cut when he’d found out, and enjoyed the night they laid the seats back and just talked about nothing until they fell asleep after a nice fucking chow-down.

It wasn’t nice when he found out shit he thought was long said and done with.

 

It started out as just a mild inconvenience. Morty and him where sitting with some pretty hot merchandize that could have easily gotten them fined and jailed if they were caught with it. Morty asked meekly at first when they might be heading home. Rick laughed and said it’d be a good couple hours. Morty asked about twenty or so minutes later if it was cool that they stop at a store.

“Wh-what the fuck for Morty?”

“I gotta, you know, I gotta pee.” Morty blushed a pretty embarrassing shade of red and tried to hide himself in his shoulders.

“Ugh, Christ. If I see something I’ll stop.”

And about ten or so later, Rick spotted a truck-stop. Pulling in, parking, and about to shut the engine off, Morty blanched and shook his head.

“Y-You know I can probably hold it.”

“M-Morty we’ve got a-a-a few hours till we get home. I-I dooOOUuoon’t care what you think, you’re not gonna be able to make it.” Rick huffed, turning the car off and nodding at the restroom “Go. It’s fine.”

“N-No, seriously, it’s ok Rick. I-I-I can hold it.”

Rick gave Morty a look, watched him a bit longer, and then started the car.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later Morty pissed himself. Rick snapped, rubbed at his forehead and just sighed deeply. “G-god dammit Mor-MoOOUOURRrty” Rick gestured at the cowering boy. “I mean fuck Morty you’re what- you should have just taken a piss at the service station!”

“I know.” Morty whispered. He detailed the ship when they got back and was put on laundry duty that week, keeping his head down the whole time.

 

The next time it happened was when they were stuck in the middle of a job, pinned between a wall and their escape route. Morty had whined a little about needing to go, and when Rick pointed out a restroom, Morty declined again. Well, actually, all Rick saw was Morty heading off in that direction, only to have him appear by his side a few minutes later, so he assumed he’d accepted the offer. But as they were running, Morty faltered and pissed himself for the second time that month.

It seemed like maybe those were the only freak accidents. A few months went by with no incent.

But then it happened again in rapid succession.

Morty pissed himself just before they made it through the door to the motel. He pissed himself again as they were just breaking atmosphere on a job. Hell, it happened when they were leaving from dinner once.

Rick tried to ask Morty what the fuck was going on. “W-What are you doing here Morty, a-are, what do you have the same shit Summer does?” Rick barked, looming over the boy. Morty, on the other hand, sat with his hands in his lap. No pants, a pair of briefs around his slender hips. A shameful look was the loudest article he was wearing at the moment. “I mean, it’s not like, like you don’t have a plethora of places to take a lea-leak Morty! Y-You can just whip that suuOOAUucker out and piss wherever! S-So what the fuck?!”

Morty was still silent, looking to his feet.

“Whatever, next time you do it I-I-I’m getting your dick re-wired so that you pee o-o-out of your fingers’r, I-I-I don’t know, something.”

Morty had nothing to say in his defense which angered Rick something worse, because it was one thing when Morty was being defiant and mouthy for him to smack him down a peg. It was another thing entirely when he didn’t say anything, just sat there and took it. It was like punching a kid who’d already surrendered. It felt good at first but then you just felt sad and angry that there wasn’t even a victory.

 

* * *

 

 

Rick reminded Morty to pee before they left. Sometimes it wasn’t an issue. Sometimes he’d go into a bathroom and be fine. Others he’d reject and then literally push Rick over to get to their motel bathroom first. He had no fucking clue what to do or why this was even an issue. He’d never had this problem with Morty before and he couldn’t tell if this was something that had been going on for years that he’d just had a slight oversight on, or if this was new and he’d be stuck with it from here on out.

Rick wasn’t sure who exactly to go to this for either, given that no one who would know was willing to talk to him. Beth had stopped leaving tear-filled voice mails. She texted Morty a few times a week. Mostly ‘Come home.’ And ‘We’ll figure it out’. At one point she started texting Rick. She’d gotten drunk when she’d done it because what started out as ‘How the FUCK could you do this’ turned into ‘Doughnut come highway aging.” Which he assumed was ‘Don’t come home again’.

He’d ask Jerry but fuck that.

So that really only left Summer. Which, out of all the people he could have contacted, Summer was becoming one of the more tolerable. Her and Morty still texted off and on, and Rick felt less and less like he needed to keep tabs on them. Summer didn’t understand sure, but she also didn’t need to and really all she wanted was to make sure Morty wasn’t being forced into this. Which was noble. And when she realized that Rick didn’t just force this on Morty, she eased up.

Only slightly.

But it was enough.

Rick’s fingers hovered over the icon on his phone to text Summer. Morty was in the shower, having made it through another week without incident. Finally throwing all caution to the wind he texted her. Simple, forward and to the point:

“Did Morty always have the same pissing problem you do or is that new?”

A half hour went by before his phone buzzed that there was any kind of response.

“Delete my number.”

Well, ok, Rick wasn’t sure what he was expecting. But it made sense that that might be her response. Rick tossed his phone on the table and then rolled into bed, pulling a hard drink from his flask and closing his eyes. Morty who’d been in the shower before, came out with wet matted hair and skin just a bit pinker than normal. Rick, who’d been tired and slightly cranky over all of this, melted a little at the sight of Morty, calm and relaxed with his creamy skin and hard lines. He was growing so fucking well into himself. Rick scooted over and Morty cuddled in close, wrapping his arms around Rick, resting his head against the other’s chest.

Rick felt Morty’s too warm skin seep its heat into his cold old skin. He hummed, content, the feeling warming him at every corner. Fuck, he hated how he was taking away all this time from Morty leading some semblance of a normal life. But you know what? He was growing used to ignoring that screaming NO that rattled around his head when Morty was too close or was pulling him into a feverish kiss.

 

A few days down the line, Morty was texting furiously with what Rick could only assume was Summer. He wanted to pity Morty for having his deepest connections only in the family pool, but he also wasn’t one to judge people’s lifestyles either, so...

“H-hey, Morty, mind uh, mind stopping in to one of the ship-stations to grab your Grandpa some fuckin munchies? I-I-I-I’m thinking like, Noopers and some Spangzeez. Oh! Shit son! You know what I could go for?” Rick smacked the steering wheel and grinned back at Morty,

“H-huh? What Rick?” Morty finally set his phone down and smiled “What are you craving?”

“Some motha-fuckin Pootzools!” Rick cheered, throwing his hands in the air, only to grab the steering wheel hard and throw the ship into a nose-drive. “Shit son, it’s been a hella age since we’ve popped some of those into our gobs!”

Morty couldn’t help but laugh. He didn’t see Rick get too excited, or well he did, but not over simple things. It made Morty feel good, like he was seeing a pretty genuine side of Rick. “Y-yeah that sounds good actually.”

“R-Remember when we left them suckers next to the vent, but it was like, the miiIIIEEAOUUeeh” Rick coughed and then grinned again “When the middle of them got all melty but-“

“But the outside was still hard! Y-Yeah! And the liquid kinda just gushed into your mouth!”

“Like a fuckin creamy little blowjob,” Rick laughed.

They made it to a ship-stop a few minutes later. Morty volunteered going in,

“Leave me some tunes!” Rick called back, which made Morty toss his phone into the car before he left for the station. Rick waited till the doors closed behind Morty to pick up his phone. Picking some song, he really didn’t care what, he started digging through his texts.

 

* * *

 

Summer: So Rick texted me

Morty: Oh? Shit what about?

Summer: I guess you’ve been wetting yourself again?

Morty: Oh god

Summer: Yeah well I told him to fuck off.

Morty: I still cant believe he texted you about it...

Summer: Well I mean you’ve had this issue since you were 14 so I’m kinda surprised he didn’t know about it?

Morty: He was busy probably. Didn’t really have time to check to see if I was wetting my pants

Summer: Yeah but Mom was pissed about it and Dad even suggested taking you to the doctor to see if you had a small bladder too! Like, you’d THINK someone who says they love you would know that

Morty: Summer

Summer: Sorry I still can’t believe he texted me But for real though you never told me what was with you and bathrooms??

Morty: I just hate public restrooms.

Summer: Yeah but why? Like, did you have some toilet water splash your butt and now you’re freaked out by germs?

Morty: No. look Summer I just don’t want to get into it… I just don’t like them much and unfortunately private restrooms are hard to come by in space

Summer: I bet… You know… You can come to me for anything. You know that right?

Morty: Yeah

Summer: Because I think “I wanna fuck Grandpa Rick” kinda takes the cake on everything. Literally everything else is a vanilla daydream after that

Morty: Gross

Summer: But true! So anyhow I just wanted to let you know that if something happened you can tell me.

Morty: I was attacked in a bathroom on one of Rick’s adventures…

Summer: Oh?

Morty: Yeah, and it fucked me up. It still fucks me up. I still worry I’ll be alone in a bathroom with some asshole who won’t stop and I can’t handle it

Summer: Oh god Morty you never told me

Morty: I haven’t told anyone. I think Rick knew something happened. But who knows. I never told him either.

Summer: Why not?

Morty: I didn’t want him to win some shitty argument we were having… He was trying to teach me how fucked up the world was, but I don’t think he had that in mind.

Summer: Yeah probably not.. You gonna be ok Morty?

Morty: Yeah, just gotta drink less when we’re going out, maybe actually take him up on the catheter thing..

Summer: Gross. Are you ok though? Coming home yet?

Morty: No. Still happy

Summer: Still gross. Ok well stay safe out there Morty

 

* * *

 

 

The phone felt hot in Rick’s hand. He knew there was nothing he could do to take back what happened. He hated the fact that some fuck had the nerve to touch Morty like that, that Rick hadn’t been keeping a good enough watch on Morty to let it happen. He could feel the pure unadulterated rage that bubbled up in his gut when he saw Morty panic at the sight of Him again. He tossed the phone to the side and tried to swallow down as much of his aimless anger as he could.

The fuck was dead. He couldn’t kill him again, and it still wouldn’t fix what happened to Morty.

Speak of the devil, Morty came back with several bags of Pootzools, as well as some Flutsies and Kupckels. “I kinda figured we can always use something in the car, you know i-i-if we ever get stuck, o-or if we just get hungry.” Morty grabbed his phone and turned the music off. “Y-you ok Rick?” Morty asked, reaching out to rest a hand on his shoulder.

“Y-yeah Morty.” He was quiet, a tense silence washing over the car. Morty thought for a second that he’d done something wrong. Rick knew he should clarify that it wasn’t Morty’s fault, but he was trying hard not to verbalize the fact that he had no fucking clue that Morty was still afraid of being assaulted in the bathroom.

This was one of the times that when he learned something new about Morty, it pissed him off. How the fuck could he have not seen it or at least connected one and two together. Rick put the car into drive and peeled out of the parking lot.

“Music, or something Morty, it’s fuckin quiet and I’m outta words.” Rick muttered, and Morty was thankful because he didn’t want to talk when there was something heavy in the air between them. He clicked his phone back on and played something slow and somber. And it was fine because neither of them were in the mood to pretend to be happy or be forced into that emotion through the music anyways.

 

After about an hour though Rick broke the silence.

“I killed him you know.”

Morty’s head snapped to attention and just watched Rick. Who ‘he’ was could be anyone and it scared Morty to think that someone he cared about was dead on the ground and he wasn’t there to at least say good bye.

“That fucker who touched you.”

Oh.

Morty calmed himself, but there was a panic at the remembrance of the hands on his body, the fear and cold terror that took him over. He didn’t want to be reminded of it. But it seemed to be coming up a lot lately. More to the point, he could feel the sudden realization that Rick had to have read his texts to learn this crawled into the forefront of his mind.

“You can’t-” Morty started, already turning his phone on to add a password to the lock screen. “You can’t kill them all, or know what they might look like Rick.”

It was too smart and too real coming from Morty. Rick hated the way it sat in his stomach.

“Y-you got a poOOUUEeoint.” Rick admitted, having nothing good to combat that. They didn’t say much to each other till they got to the Motel. But Morty was the first one to grab for Rick’s hand and wrap it around him when they went to bed.

 

 

Rick made a point to stop at more restrooms for Morty from that point forward.


	10. Remembering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty reflects on exactly what happened between Summer finding out about Rick and him, and when Rick took him away.

“Morty, you have to come home.”

“Morty, you can’t keep doing this to your mother.”

“Mom’s been getting drunk a lot more lately. Pretty sure they’re gonna split soon. Dad keeps acting like he knew Rick was gonna fuck you up, and Mom can’t handle that she let a ped-“

 

Morty turned his phone off.

 

“They still boOOUothering you?” Rick muttered, “You know, we can still go-“

“Back, yeah I know Rick. I-I-I-I know that door’s still wide open for me.” Morty was too angry in his response and Rick gave his own dismissive sound. He was not in the mood to deal with Morty’s rollercoaster of emotions, but also not in a position to complain.

 

It had been almost half a year since they’d left. Morty was edging on 19 now. Same height, same curly hair, now sporting a nasty bruise on his neck where Rick bit in too hard, and a few new scars along his body. Rick still enjoyed tracing the lines along the one on his shoulder, reminding Morty how fucking beautiful he looked in hushed tones. Some nights were lovely and genuine and passionate. Others, like tonight, were tense and thick and suffocating.

The cloud of the Smith name still hung heavy in the air. It wrapped around Morty like a force-field that seemed impenetrable, as much as Rick wanted to dip his fingers in and rip away at it. It wouldn’t be hard either. They were simple minded, small, and nowhere near as world-wise as Morty was. They had no idea how many species out there in the universe didn’t give a single fuck who you decided to sleep with. They had no comprehension of how small they were in space, how much it just didn’t matter in the long run. Rick knew because he knew Earth customs.

But that, despite how easy it was, wasn’t the correct thing to do. It felt too close to grooming and the idea that he’d somehow pushed Morty to this… Well if he was being honest with himself, Rick still though he accidentally conditioned Morty to be this way. It was the small bitter aftertaste of each kiss they shared. It was the salt on Morty’s skin and the rich smell of his hair. It was the sweet reprieve he found in a lonely drink at 4 Am after Morty was spent and asleep on the bed. A calm reminder that it was a possibility. That he had done this Morty.

They both got into their new motel, as every night is some new motel, and crashed, eyes closing. They’d been going from shit-hole to shit-hole since they left. Rick had a hovel or two he could store Morty if he needed to, but he wanted to make sure, above all, that no one caught wind. It wasn’t unheard of for a Rick to fuck their Morty. Each one of them had the ability to. Rick knew they had to have. But it was rare that any of them took the opportunity up, as it held a lot of stigma with the counsel. He wanted to make sure that Beth, or Jerry, or fuck, even Summer, didn’t try anything brash.

 

“I’m calling dibs on the shower.” Rick muttered, tossing his duffle bag onto the single bed, watching Morty reach in and grab for something in his little bag of ‘I can’t live without my memories’.

“Sounds good Rick. I-I-I might be asleep when you come out,” Morty shrugged, zipping the bag right back up. All that was in his hands were a pair of headphones.

“That’s fine.”

The room was small. One bed, a sofa along the same wall as the door, another door that lead into a bathroom that basically had a shower, a shitter, and a sink, and that was that.

Morty looked his phone over again. Plugging his headphones in he closed his eyes and remembered how this all happened. How every dingy motel, every night left sleeping in the passenger seat of Rick’s car, took on the word of “Home” more and more, rather than his massive upper “middleclass” home. How each home cooked meal Beth made (which weren’t always the best and most times were pretty instant, but damn she should shake and bake with the best of them) suddenly turned into bags of a greasy dive they nabbed food from. Sometimes it was a place that was more like the space equivalent of Denny’s or hell, even Red Robbin. But most times it was something pre-packaged and easy to throw back.

He relived the day between when Summer walked in to see Rick leaving a new mark that he’d been getting from his ‘girlfriend’, to when Rick came to bail him out of everything, including his life at 3 in the morning.

 

* * *

 

 

When Summer walked out, Morty instantly pushed himself out of Rick’s hands.

“w-What the fuck Morty?!”

“S-Sorry, Rick, Summer, Su-Summer just walked in here a-and saw a-and I” Morty turned to see Rick’s expression had changed from coy and devious to dead serious. “i-I-“ those cold and calculating eyes went from the door to Morty as soon as he squeaked a noise “I’m gonna go talk to her. M-maybe try and convincer her to not, you know, d-do anything crazy.”

“Mm,” Rick’s response was a million miles away and Morty was scared shitless that he’d wake up with a new sister and a new family tomorrow.

“You.” Morty started “Can’t wipe their memories or something c-can you?”

“I’d have to get the materials a-and I just used the last of the Ratzo powder on the Matter Destabilizer.” Rick growled “I know a guy, b-but he’s broke the last one a while ago.” He looked back to the door and sneered as if willing the house to just forget about all of this. “Point is, Morty, i-it’d take me at least a week to make something that didn’t, wiiIIEEOUo-ipe there memories entirely.”

Morty nodded, turned back and kissed Rick’s lips, missing them slightly and catching just the lower lip.

“I-I don’t. I still want this ok?” was the last thing Morty said to Rick directly for the rest of that day.

 

Summer was in her room, pacing around back and forth, late for her job. Turned out she was coming into the laundry room specifically to grab for one of her “button-ups which she knew wasn’t dry yet but maybe it would dry by the time she got to work” shirts. Morty knocked on the door, peaking his head in just slightly. His neck still was uncovered and the mark Rick had made showed, it was a watercolor of purple, black and red, splashed along his skin.

“Oh, my god, Morty w-what the fuck WAS that?!” Summer barked from her room. Morty jolted from the doorframe to inside her domain and held up his hands.

“S-Shh, Summer please,” Morty whined, using all the same care and practice to shutting her door when he entered the room as he did Rick’s. It got a dubious look from Summer.

“What, Morty, don’t want everyone hearing that Rick had you pinned against a fucking wall?” Her voice rising a she spoke

“S-Summer, you don’t-“

“Is he a vampire? Is that it?” The fact that Summer looked hopeful that Rick might be some insatiable monster of the supernatural kind, and not just the social kind, made Morty want to throw up. He hated that he had to crush her, but his silence was already doing that for him. The longer he took to respond, the more Summer’s face twisted into enough disgust for the entire house.

“No.” Morty finally squeaked out, sealing the deal on Summer’s position.

“I…” She started, her words sticking to the inside of her own thought as she worked out what to do, to say about this. A long breath came instead and she sat down. “I need to know a few things Morty.”

Morty sat down again the door. “O-Ok Summer, sure. Anything.”

“How long has this been going on?” She looked defeated, ready to hear the worst of it, a therapist who hadn’t signed up for this particular brand of shit.

“Since you went apartment hunting with Mom and Dad.”

Summer winced and shook her head, “Oh god. Morty! Has he done something like this before?!” Her tone was near screaming now.

“S-SUMMER!” Morty yelled over her, his hands in the air and trying to visually show her to keep her voice down. “N-no though, i-it just happened this year.”

“Ugh, ok look, Morty, you don’t. Just because your eighteen now, that doesn’t mean you have to, you know.” Summer was trying her hardest to try and make Morty understand he didn’t have to give into Rick, and Morty was, in his own way, appreciative of his sister trying to protect him.

“I know, I-I-I was the one who, uh, erm, y-you know, started it.”

That killed a lot of Summer’s threats towards Rick. For a few seconds at least.

“Morty you know how fucked up this is right? Even if you.” She watched her little brother for a bit. Confused, small, and trying to do what he felt was right and what he wanted. She swallowed her own issues about Grandpa Rick’s undivided attention down as well as her little liaison with Mr. Needful.

Now wasn’t the time.

“Look,” She got down on Morty’s level, sitting with him on the ground and reaching out to take his hand. “I know that this might seem like a good thing, that you’re happy and that you’re finally alright with yourself. You might even convince yourself it’s normal.” She looked at him hard “But there’s some hurtles you’ll never be able to get over Morty. Like, the fact that he’s related to you?”

“B-But that, I mean, it’s not like, anything bad could happen with that, s-since we’re two dud-“

“Too graphic right now!” Summer cut him off, not needing the mental imagery now, or really, ever. “Ok well what about the fact that He’s 84 Morty?”

“S-So? I-I-I don’t-“

“What you don’t see it? The wrinkles around his mouth or eyes or the bald spot on the back of his head? He’s an old man Morty!”

“Yeah b-but I kinda-“

“He’s gonna die way before you.” Summer dropped the hammer and let that shoot out into the room. It was a topic everyone tip toed around for Morty. Rick had been Morty’s best and only friend for so long, it was tricky to allude to the fact that Rick might have another twenty years at the most, and even that was tentative. “You’re hitching all your dreams onto a dying star Morty.”

Morty was quiet for too long, letting it all roll around his head. He curled a little on himself. Summer felt terrible, but she was trying to look at this like a strained bone. If there was a clean break made to the arm, it would heal better than if there was just this continuous small damage made. If Morty hated her now for it, maybe he’d forgive her later when he married some Jessica look-alike at twenty two.

“I love him.”

“I know, Morty, we all do, but I think, you just gotta, like, try something else. Have you even dated anyone Morty?”

“Yes!” He sounded indignant that maybe Summer thought the only person he might be able to get any action from was some kind of interfamily pity fuck.

“Holy shit! Ok, jeez Morty.” Summer backed off for just a minute, hands raised in defense. “I just, I mean, like, how come that didn’t work out?” Her phone was blowing up in her pocket, but work could wait.

“It worked out fine, I guess? I don’t know.” Morty rested his hands on his arms which had long since wrapped around his legs. “I broke up with her after a few months.” He shrugged around his head and buried it deeper into his knees “I-I-I keep trying to be normal, Summer, b-but I have this kinda, you know, this thing a-and I mean... I don’t know how to make it go away anymore. I’ve tried everything, and it keeps, you know, it keeps coming back a-and finally, finally I get it a-and you’re thinking about taking it away.”

“Well duh Morty, I mean… You know if Rick wasn’t constantly demanding YOUR attention this wouldn’t be a problem!” She retorted, falling back and just sitting with Morty for a few minutes.

“Kinda like how Rick’s lack of attention had you dating an old dude when you were 16?” Morty fired back.

“Morty you resentful piece of shit.” Summer hissed. She got up and taking a nice big step away from her brother. “This isn’t about me ok? This is about you and you’re gross as hell need to fuck our Grandpa. I mean holy crap, Morty, this guy was changing MOM’S diapers! Even if this goes EXACTLY how you want it to, you’re going to end up at 40, alone in some space motel with a dead boyfriend and NO family or friends who even know how to approach you anymore!”

Summer grabbed her phone, texted someone and then went to grab for the door Morty was leaning against.

“S-Summer no! No look ok l-look I’m sorry j-just don’t, please don’t tell Mom and Dad!” he begged, Morty’s fingers laced together in a prayer to Summer, who held Morty’s entire life from this point forward in her hands.

The weight of that didn’t hit her till then.

She should have just worn her shirt from yesterday. Mom would have known how to deal with this, hell Jerry would have known how to deal with this.

“M-Morty I-“ She started

“Please Summer.”

“I have to go to work, I have to, Morty, ok?” She leaned down and grabbed his shoulder “You can’t keep this under wraps forever so, if you want, you can tell Mom and Dad on your own. That way you have till my shift gets out. But they have to know Morty.”

She was out of the door before Morty could stop her.

 

Morty sat alone in her room for a while, wondering what it would feel like if he never saw it again. Or if he would survive a house that had forcefully cut Rick out. Morty finally left Summer’s room to come out to a hallway that had a million photos, all of them kissed with images of Rick. Morty tried to imagine the hallway with spots where the sun had faded the paint around what were now just empty squares. He could count on one hand how many phots would be left.

He tried to think of the garage with nothing more than the car and yard tools. The spare-room turned back into a craft room. The house without the ramblings of Rick and everyone just pretending he never existed. Swept under the rug and forced to be out of sight and there for out of mind.

Something heavy sat in his chest and he wanted out.

Rick was gone, in his own room. No doubt thinking of an out for himself. Thinking of some way to buy them more time to live like the cretens they were outside of everyone’s peripheral.

It was night when Morty heard Beth pull her car up. Jerry was there to meet her at the doorway. Some muffled talking was heard, Beth made a laugh and then stopped it cold in its tracks. Jerry sounded fevered about something. Silence. Summer was there talking to them as well. Beth sounded more and more hysterical before finally Summer calmed her. He thought he heard Rick’s name once or twice, and suddenly there was nothing.

Morty tried so hard to figure out something to be doing in his room. Homework didn’t exist for him and honestly Morty had made a submittal to every school he could think of that didn’t ask for fifty dollars out of pocket from him. He didn’t know what to be doing on his laptop and he didn’t want to look guilty.

 

Ten minutes passed.  


Twenty minutes.  


Thirty.

 

Finally, he heard voices again, Beth and Jerry talking low back and forth between each other. Jerry sounded irritated and Beth just, she sounded like she was trying to keep her hopes up. Summer said Morty’s name, and finally there was movement in the house again. A thud of footsteps, coming for him and coming to either deliver the social death in the family, or to start their witch hunt. The knock on his door almost dampened the sound of his own heart in his throat.

“Morty, s-sweety you mind if we come in?” Beth was trying very hard to keep her tone level.

“Y-yeah um le-lemme just-” Morty just stood there, thinking of some kind of exit. But there was none, there was just the window and nothing else. “C-Come on in.”

Summer stood out in the hallway as Beth slowly came in and sat on Morty’s bed, nodding at Morty to join her. Jerry leaned against the desk and just watched for a bit.

“Hey sweetheart.” Beth started and rubbed Morty’s back. It took everything in his power not to just run for the door. It was open. He could make it. “Look so we just wanted to clear the air about some stuff ok?” she nodded to Jerry, who stood up a little taller.

“Yeah, champ, you’re not in trouble either, so don’t worry too much, Morty. It’s not a test.” He chuckled. Beth leered and he straightened himself out “Look, son, so we heard that your grandpa Rick, you know, might have erm-“ He looked to Beth who looked to be barely containing herself. “You know might have tried to pull something a little, I guess, sexual with you?”

It sounded so foreign.

“Look, no one’s saying it happened Morty. We just want to hear your side of the story. Ok?” Beth extrapolated. “I just, we all need to know the truth here. It’s just, it’s a really big accusation.”

Morty looked past Jerry to Summer who looked straight back at him. Begging him to say something.

“Morty…” Beth tried to pull his attention once more “All you have to say is that, it’s not happening. Ok? Sweetheart? That’s it, just say it’s not really happening.”

 

All at once Morty realized that Beth wasn’t looking for the truth, she was looking for anything to prove that her father wasn’t the one leaving those marks on Morty’s neck. She was begging him to allow her to keep the notion that her desperate want to keep her father in her life wasn’t about to lead to her son being touched by him. Her plea hit Morty so bluntly and so hard he crumpled.

His eyes began to well with tears, and he fucking begged someone to make sure they didn’t go down his face. But he was starting to see the mask on Beth’s face, his mom’s face, he started to see his mom break down too, tears welling in her own eyes as she started to read all of Morty as well

Two addicts to the same drug. They knew how to read each other too well.

“Mo-Morty baby, i-its ok if you say no…” Beth was trying so hard to keep the façade up, but neither of them were doing each other any favors.

Jerry looked back at Summer and just watched.

“Sorry.” She said softly and to no one in particular. Despite it being for the better, Summer didn’t enjoy being the reason the family couldn’t pretend to be normal and happy. Jerry just shook his head and stood by Summer,

“It was the right thing to do.”

Beth had collapsed around Morty, holding him and saying it was all going to be ok. That they’d find a way to figure it out together, that it was for the better, they’d work it all out.

 

* * *

 

 

A strange off-kilter feeling took the house over. Beth was into the wine already, her nose red and eyes puffy. Dinner hadn’t even been started.

“Fend for yourself night,” Jerry said. It felt like it too, a fend for yourself scramble to find a place to stand in the newly upturned home.

Summer was in the kitchen, watching Rick, who looked like he wanted to run. A criminal on the verge of being caught, but with no easy way out.

“So, um. Your mom and I, we were hoping to have a um, a family meeting!” Jerry cheered, trying his hardest to not come off as too obvious. “Um, so we’re hoping everyone can be there tomorrow, how about at noon? Summer and Beth don’t have work and Morty hasn’t graduated yet so. A-And Rick you have to be there too.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the wooOOurld.” Rick snarled through bared teeth. Summer slammed a cup down as she got her own dinner ready. He snapped his attention to her.

“Oops.” Summer muttered, looking straight back at Rick.

“Good so. I guess we’ll just kinda, meet together then. Beth you wanna, maybe talk to me in the den?” Jerry ended his little announcement, ruffling’s Morty’s hair as he took up as little space as he could on the sofa next to his mother.

“Sure.” Beth sighed, getting to her feet and following Jerry out.

 

Summer rounded in on Rick the second she heard the computer den’s door click closed.

“What the actual fuck do you think you’re doing Rick?! You, did you actually think this was ok?”

Rick said nothing and instead took a nice long sip of the orange juice he had in front of him.

“You, you broke Mom’s heart! Again! You’ve been doing this shit to Morty and you didn’t think that it was kinda fucked up?”

“S-Summer!” Morty got up, trying to go to Rick to defend him.

“Don’t, Morty.” Rick cut in, looking at Summer directly.

“Oh he should worry! You’re lucky mom wants to get you moved out of here rather than call the fucking cops on you! I-I, Grandpa Rick how- I mean-“

“Go on, Summer, get it out, fucking scream at me if it makes you feel any better.” Rick sounded bored and it drove Summer crazy.

“You’re a fucking monster! How can you want to touch your GRANDSON of all things Rick? What? Are hive-minds and giant bug ladies not enough for you? Not shocking for the great fucking Rick Sanchez? Huh? Had to go target the one person in the world who’d trust you enough to let you do that kinda shit without asking twice about it!?” She was taking a step closer each breath. “You’re supposed to keep this family SAFE! Remember that Rick?! Yeah well how can you, if we can’t even be safe from you?!” She was shaking, fists balled up. “Did you ever think about anyone else like that? Or was Morty just easy pickings? Is that why you left mom?! Because it was too big a tempta-“

“That’s enough.” Rick stood up. Taller than Summer still, he towered over her in height and in presence. He glared her down and while her mouth closed, there was a rage in her he couldn’t hope to snuff out.

“You’re not saying shit I haven’t told myself.” Rick grumbled, before jamming his empty cup into her stomach and letting it go, letting it fall where it did. Summer tried to grab for it, but by the time she looked up to continue laying into Rick, he was gone.

“You want that, Morty? Despite what it’s doing to everyone!?” Summer hissed, slamming his cup on the table and going after Jerry and Beth.

Morty was left to his own devices, and, despite every sensible fiber in his body, went after Rick.

He didn’t knock, just came in. Rick was sitting at his table, fiddling with a pink crystal and tinkering around with the stabilization collars that Morty had at times, forgotten about. Rick said nothing, looking over to Morty and then just back down at his pile of junk. Morty took several small steps, approaching the very smart and very deadly caged animal that was Rick Sanchez.

If Interdimensional Federal Prison couldn’t hold him what chance did the Smith family have?

Rick made no move to push Morty away. He felt the smallest warmth of the boy’s lips on his temple.

“I-I-I don’t erm, you know, regret it.” Morty started, kissing him again “Just that, you know, it had to end.”

 

It wasn’t a good excuse by any means.

But it gave Rick an excuse to keep working on his time disrupter.

He’d activate it at 3:17 AM. That way he and Morty could get the hell out.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey Morty, y-you awake?” Rick asked, tapping Morty’s shoulder. It was his turn to be half naked, wrapped in a towel. His usually wild hair was out of control after being dried, sticking up in strange floofs, yet still a bit damp. He had skin that folded around his hips and ribs, shoulder and arms. He was everything Morty had come to love. Despite it all he still didn’t regret it.

“Mm, y-yeah, Rick, just was kinda zoning out.” Morty admitted, pulling his headphones off and watching him.

Rick smirked, crawled into bed and laid out over top of Morty, still damp from the shower.

“S-So I got a new job for us tomorrow. Y-you in?” Rick kissed at Morty’s stomach, ribs and hips. A low moan escaped from Morty as he reached down to play with the stray damp strands of Rick’s hair. Rick bit into Morty’s thigh and Morty let out the smallest moan.

 

“Yes.”


	11. The Fuck up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The job does not go as planned and Morty is drunk.

The job was a fucking bust, and Morty hated Rick so much he couldn’t see straight.

 

See, it was supposed to be easy.

 

“In and out, Mor-MooOURrty” Rick had the slyest grin on his mouth. It sent shivers down Morty’s spine that ended at his cock. He hated that dangerous look Rick got sometimes. It meant his heart was going to be racing harder and his legs were going to be pumping his body across a life or death expanse. He loved what it did to him. He hated the pull it had on him, how no one else was gonna give him that kinda rush, but fuck he’d enjoy it while it was there.

The job was a simple bait and switch. There was going to be an exchange of goods. Some Satsle paste. It was made from a rare mineral that only one planet in the known universe made. It was under heavy surveillance from the Federation and it was only passed between their own hands. Rick’s client wasn’t too pleased with that. So what they suggested was that Rick snuck in, grabbed the goods, switched them for an identical case filled with a material that looked, tasted and smelled the same. Morty would deliver the dud.

“But what they don’t know is I’m gonna, I’m gonNUUAUUgh. I’m giving them a dud too. Taking that prime cut shit for myself and gonna split it and sell it double on the market. Straight up gonna make HELLA bank dawg!” Rick whooped as he slapped the steering wheel.

“A-Aren’t you worried they, they might think you’re gonna do that?” Morty asked, though despite his worries, he had a grin on his lips.

“Oh, fuck yeah, but, so here’s the thing. You’re gonna deliver it right? A-an-and look, so, when you deliver it, it’s gonna have a bomb in the case, so- so look when they oOOuopen it, it’ll blow up right in their face!”

“I mean, what if they make me open it?”

“Good thinking but a step behind like always, Morty” Rick’s face was split into a wide and wicked grin, and Morty was getting wrapped up in it, too close and too eager. “You’re gonna let ‘em know that if you tamper with it, they’ll think you’re gonna fuck with it. You want them to make sure they are getting that shit as pure as it can get. Got it?”

“Got it.”

 

Yeah, it didn’t turn out that way.

 

The switch worked fine for the federation front. Rick got the case as easy as it was to breathe. He pulled out the container that held the paste, it was golden and sparkled as if each and every single star in the universe had been condensed down into one single vial. Morty gasped when he saw it and Rick couldn’t help but grin at his grandson’s fascination. Rick pulled out another tube, looked it over, smirked and stuffed it snug in its container.

Rick had assured Morty back in their Motel, before this all started, that the tube was the exact weight, glass thickness, and model as the Federation’s.

“Prefect replication. Mostly cause I stole it a million years ago and never had a reason to use this sucker till now,” Rick chuckled as he poured the new paste in. “This was a bit more complicated, a-and I won’t go into it because- actually fuck it I will.” Rick was grinning wild and carefree. Morty was pulled into it like he always was, it felt so good to hear Rick trust him to keep up with his plans.

He’d been doing that a lot more lately too, telling him exactly what they plan was, how he was going to play into it and how they were gonna pull it off. Morty always sat forward and nodded and soaked it all up. Sometimes it worked out perfectly, sometimes Rick got distracted with Morty’s doe eyed look and eager face, begging for some new kinda rush, lips turned into a needy smile. Those nights Rick usually forgot the tail end of the plan but got to remap all of Morty’s skin with his fingers and mouth.

To be fair those where plans Morty liked the best.

 

When Morty delivered the fake, the Federation guards looked a little dubious. But Morty was in the same attire as all the other researchers, he even had a key fob, a badge and an ID that registered perfectly. Hell he even had a history with them. Morty Cashzen, bottom of his class, set a laboratory on fire and had two sexual harassment charges on him. Still with the facility because he was one of the few Human agents who was willing to work with them after being abducted. Made for a good sleeper agent if the need ever came up. Nineteen, human, type AB- blood, XY chromosomes.

They took the case, took the tube out, weighed it, and did a scan of it. Morty tried to breathe easy.

 

* * *

 

 

“If it doesn’t work it’ll beep three times and after the first beep, be ready to hit the deck, Morty, ‘cause that sucker’s gonna blow.” Rick had cautioned.

“Y-You know there are a lot of erm, you know, bombs? Is that like, are you on a bomb kick today, Rick?” Morty asked, picking up a stray wire left from Rick hooking another explosive up to the second dud case.

“L-look, Morty, I have, I have a lot of chemical runoff from that Zoopie ink we got like, a-a few chapters back. A-And it’s highly explosive a-and I don’t want you accidentally tripping into it like the klutz you are,” Rick grumbled “A-And so what if I have a lot of bombs, Mooorty? What? A-are they not in fashion right now? I-is it tacky to be using bombs this time of year? I-I’m sorry I didn’t knoOOughow you had some kinda super scientist almanac on when bomb use was in season...”

“Holy shit! Jeez, Rick! Okay! Use bombs!” Morty snapped, “Y-You don’t have to be such an asshole about it.” He had been about to grumble off before Rick had caught him by the hips and pulled him into another hour long distraction.

 

* * *

 

 

Not a single beep was heard. Morty was thanked and set on his way. He made it to a security closet, changed his clothes, ran up an air-vent, and navigated his way to Rick, where they stored the paste and its tube in a compartment in Rick’s car.

Morty got to work setting up the second case, putting the second batch of the almost identical material in the container. He clicked the case shut, locked it and armed it.

 

This is where the job fucked up.

 

Rick’s client was waiting for Rick in a large open room. Several of these creatures stood in wait, their heads all which vaguely resembled a crow with a mouth full of teeth and arms that went down to the floor, thin but strong strings of muscle that ended in thick claws. Their middles were chopped clean off, red tendrils of what might have been guts were left to hang in free-fall. They hovered from the ground, and Morty assumed the metal ring that circled around their sawed off middles could be attributed their floating.

Morty was flawless in letting them know that the reason he couldn’t open the case to show it off was because he didn’t want them thinking he was tampering with the goods. They were compliant for a while until one finally pulled Morty to the side.

“Please scan the case.” Their leader crooned. He was smaller than all of them, with inky black feathers and black eyes in comparison to the taller pure white goons with red eyes.

“Oh and put a gun to Rick’s Morty’s head.”

“W-Wha?”

Before he even had a chance to blink two of the monsters had their arms on Morty’s wrists and were pulling them taught. A third came up from behind and aimed an impressively large gun to Morty’s head.

Rick got a transmission that simply said “For every minute you take to deliver us the real Satsle Paste, we’re gonna blow another hole in your Morty.”

 

* * *

 

 

Morty left with two bullet holes, and Rick left with three.

 

They got in late, neither of them saying a thing to the other. Rick hit the bed first, falling face first into it, not even bothering to say goodnight or how are you. But then again, Morty had more than told Rick to fuck off the second he tried to crack a joke about getting even more holes in his body. Rick took his cue and decided to leave it alone. He could have fought more, and he probably would later, but they were both sore as hell and the self-healing paste was out, meaning that they’d have to pick up more soon.

Morty forgot how fucking much that shit hurt.

He took his seat on the ground. He wanted to scream and yell and ask Rick why he kept putting him in harm’s way. Why he kept insisting that Morty take all these bullets for him. Why they couldn’t just find a shitty little spot on a planet and fuck their lives away there. But the longer he thought about it, the longer he knew that wouldn’t work. Rick needed to feel alive through the constant adrenalin rush that was his ‘work’ and Morty was just as hooked. The both of them would fall apart and break at the seams if they were forced into some domestic life.

Morty’s phone had several new rounds of guilt ridden texts.

He let his head thunk back and, for a moment wasn’t sure what to even do with this life. He wanted so bad to scream and rage and demand Rick tell him why he had done this, why he needed to get him hooked, why Rick had done this to him. But Morty also wasn’t that stupid. He knew he had a thousand opportunities to ditch Rick. To let Rick fend for himself, but Morty was just as dependent on him.

 

He wanted to drink.

 

He wanted to get to that place Rick was usually, loose and angry but able to keep his liquored lips shut about it. He wanted to feel the burn of a drink replace the burn of a hundred different screams that had built up in his chest about how he hated the lifestyle he craved so bad that the idea of cutting it off cold turkey scared him.

Thankfully Rick’s flask was nearby. Left on the nightstand and unguarded. Rick was passed out, so it wouldn’t go missing. When Morty reached for it he was careful to avoid the bed. In his hands, the metal flask felt so cold. It warmed easy enough, a quick shock that ebbed away into an easy and almost too gentle warmth. The heft of the liquid in it weighed heavy on Morty. But he slowly uncapped the lid.

The smell inside was hard and pungent and it was the same hint on Rick’s breath, but concentrated into a cologne. God, Morty wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t what was in here, mixed with mouthwash and rubbing alcohol. Gas, pure and simple in the flask. An emergency blend for when something cheap and FDA approved wasn’t within arms distance. The taste was worse and when it hit Morty’s throat he had to muffle his own cough.

It was terrible!

But he didn’t wait to take another swig. He winced through each swallow and shook each time. It never started to taste any better, even to the bitter end. He got up, not feeling too much, returned the flask and looked for something else. Rick always had _something_ in his bag, and today’s drink of choice was rum. Black and inviting in Morty’s hands, he twisted the cap off and let it roll to the ground. While it didn’t taste as good as everyone liked to say it would, it certainly was a step-up from the swill in Rick’s flask.

Warm, spiced, and hard, he took a few long sips from that as well. Sure enough some of it trailed down his mouth. His body felt heavy, he felt a little bit like he couldn’t get enough air, but he was so heavy he couldn’t be forced to care. His arms felt like weights had been attached to them and a dull pain rushed along his shoulders. Everywhere he looked it seemed like the frame-rate in his vision had dropped and gone missing. Gone forever, and only the image he was looking at now mattered.

“Fuck,” because what else could you say when you felt like you were on spin cycle in some industrial laundromat’s washer?

His phone was only a few inches away from his hands and Morty, apparently was stronger than he thought- because it was in his face before he even knew he’d picked it up. He wanted someone to know he was drunk. He wanted Summer to know he was drunk. Actually he wanted Summer to know he was almost dead. That he almost died out in space by some Edgar Alan Poe wet dream raven mafia bosses. He wanted Summer to know everything.

 

He started to text her.

 

He needed her to know that he would be fine dying in space, that being dead out here would be better than being dead in some office closet, a quarter of a million in debt from student loans, with a car that he got on a loan, a house he got on a loan, and a wife he met through his boss, a dog they got from the pound because god bless his wife’s heart that was the decent thing to do. Two kids, a boy and girl. The girl was gonna be named after his wife’s grandmother so of fucking course he’d name his son Richard. Rick for short.

“I’d fucking hang myself by my belt Summer, and they’d say on the report: ‘auto erotic asphyxiation’ because they saw a belt and my pants down. My pants fell off because I used my belt Summer. I wasn’t trying to jack off at work,” Morty clarified in his wall of text.

Morty said he’d rather die in space. At least there was some kind of story behind that. He die on his own terms, taking on some impossible odds that finally cut him down. And yeah, ok, that might have been something Rick conditioned into him, but Summer had to have felt it too.

“It’s why you hated being left behind.”

Because everyone Rick dragged along with got some taste of something so much bigger than them. Something deadly and dangerous but enticing and exciting. It’s human nature. He was getting told to be human, to settle down and pay taxes and get in debt and struggle over if he should take a health insurance that covers dental or vision. But this was the most human he’s ever felt! He was giving into the human need to explore and how was that so fucking wrong?!

“You know it’s also not my fault the family’s falling apart either Summer! Mom and dad were gonna get a divorce in another ten years no matter what, because they’ve always hated each other and that’s not my fault! I know what I did didn’t help. I know mom wants to think her dad is perfect and that her little boy is just some mixed up shit head who doesn’t know what he wants.” Morty texted furiously, glad his slurred words, movement and stutters didn’t translate into text. “But Rick, Rick gave me all of that, Rick gave me an out. He gave me an out on a life where no one liked me, where I was still failing school, and where I was gonna settle with the first girl who wanted to touch my dick. But I don’t have to do that now Summer. Rick gave me that. Rick’s given me so fucking much and I don’t care if that means he also gave me a love that humans would call gross.”

He wiped a few tears away from his eyes. He knew this was the first time he would be screaming back against his family. Even if it was just Summer. It was still the first time he even said anything along the lines of how he was fine, how he wanted this and how he was ok with everything. To leave him the fuck alone.

“I love him. I love the way he makes me feel Summer. I don’t care if you don’t wanna hear it, you’re going to, because if I die out here in space I want you and everyone to know I fucking love the way his lips taste, I love the little bit of crap that gets on his chin. Ok I know you think it’s gross but I love it. I love the way he looks and yeah I love the little baldspot too, ok, so fuck you! I love the way he feels around me, and in me, and you can just learn to fucking live with it. Or don’t. I don’t care.” He coughed and then laid back down, his fingers still on his phone as he wrote so openly to his sister.

“He never fucking touched me till I told him to, begged him to, and you know what, even then he still had his reservations alright. You know it’s only been till now he doesn’t drink himself to sleep after we fuck? Because it’s the first time he’s felt like maybe he didn’t force this on me?! So don’t you DARE text me about how sick it makes you! I love him and I’ll love him till I’m 40 whatever, alone in some shitty space motel mourning over him. At least I’ll have fucking understood him the way none of you did!”

 

Really all Morty was able to text out to Summer was:

_“Oh god summer I almost died in space. Like edgar pope dead from birds it, holy shot! Summer look I don’t waffle kids and a Dodge I’ll erotica with my belt and it’s my pants Summer. I’m gonna kill me with my pants. I don’t want debt and taxes ok I want rock. Dad and mom suck tethers and it’s not my foot any of that might haps. I hate school and Eric and I love rock. I love rock so much and I know u think his ducking my but is grass but I love his duck so much summer I don’t care I love his wrinkly duck so ducking much. He’s gonna die and so am I out here in space something.”_

 

Satisfied that he’d finally said his side of the story, Morty went to get up and take a nice victory lap around the complex, maybe pee on a wall and reclaim even more of his life from people who’d taken small parts of it away.

He got as far as the bed.

Morty collided with the corner of it, tripped and fell to the ground. He landed with a loud thud and dragged some of the blanket onto him. He also knocked over the end table and in turn, the lamp, which broke in front of him

“S-Shit...” Morty groaned as he tried to stand up. And, without warning, he heaved.

Rick who’d always been a light sleeper, when he wasn’t pumped full of booze, heard Morty stumble and fall. He sat up, eyes wide, wondering what the little shit might be doing. He was greeted with the wonderful sight (and smell) of Morty getting sick all over the blanket they were supposed to be sleeping on.

“God dammit Mo-Morty...” Rick whispered to himself, before getting up and grabbing for his flask, about to take a pull when he realized the thing was far too light and far too empty. Suddenly the half empty rum on the floor came into focus and it all made sense. “A-Alright. Bathroom. Now.” Rick grabbed at Morty’s arms. Morty tried to swing him away but only managed to get a weak punch in. Rolling his eyes, Rick pulled Morty into the bathroom.

Morty whined and begged no.

“Please, no, n-no, get off. S-stay away.” He was sobbing and trying to fight Rick off. Rick swallowed down his own thoughts on the matter and guided him towards the toilet (which looked fairly human this time around)

“Puke in there if you gotta Morty. Grandpa’s gonna, gotta, he’s gonna be back in a second.”

Rick used up some of the charge for his portal gun to go to a human store, grab some fucking gingerale, some mint and tonic water, he grabbed a new blanket from the store (probably a Fred Meyer for all Rick knew) and portaled his ass back. He grabbed the blanket from the room and tossed it outside and over the railing. It landed in the pool.

“Oops…”

Rick got some ice from a machine not too far off, came back into the motel and got to work making a mint and lime tonic for himself. He also made one for Morty. He got the new blanket all set up and just laid back, the music of Morty puking his guts out filling the dead night air.

About twenty or so minutes later, Morty finally stumbled out of the bathroom

“You done? I’m not going to get another blanket, fuck that, if you ralph in it you roll in it.” Rick huffed before finally nodded over to the drink on the end table “Just needs ice.”

“O-oh jeez Rick I-I-I don’t think I can, again, after that.”

“It’s a virgin. You two used to have something in common ok, just lap it up and enjoy it, the way god intended virgins to.” Rick took a long pull from his. Which, was not a virgin because fuck that.

Morty sat on the bed and took in a long drink of the bitter liquid.

 

* * *

 

 

 It was quiet for a bit.

 

“Don’t even drink my shit again or I’ll dump you on Earth myself.” Rick growled.

“You’re lying.” Morty snapped in return, taking another drink and allowing his body to slowly float up from its drowning sensation, and also for the effervescence of the soda to help his throat along.

“Morty don’t be a shit.”

They sat in silence for a bit longer.

“Do you want me to go back? A-a-are you just waiting till I do?” Morty asked at last, finally setting his drink down and watching Rick, who said nothing at first.

“You know, I don’t really fucking care anymore Morty? I’m too old to give a fuck. If you wanna fuck up your life that fine.” Rick responded. “When this is over, a-and it will end Morty, you know, because I got a good seventy years on your ass, you can’t be pissed off at me because I let you fuck your own life up.”

Rick and Morty sat in silence, together in their complicated and wrong little relationship. Still caught between knowing if this was what the other actually wanted or if each other was humoring the other.

 

Somedays it felt like maybe that’s all it was. A Mobius feedback loop of doing what the other thought they wanted.


	12. Roadtrip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty is feeling pretty good about the day and Rick talks about his heavy drug use.

Despite the fact that somedays were failures, Morty had come to enjoy the space-ship, the motels with covers over their beds, and the same shitty food every night. He really did enjoy their shanty little homes that changed every other night.

 

Today was a victory though. Rick had procured a good tub full of Moosmer slime and honestly, it had been easy to get. The creatures that oozed this particular grime were slow and stupid and excreted their jelly like Rick’s mouth excreted profanity. They got a little dirty gathering the goop as well, and they both laughed while doing it. Well, that was after Morty whined and complained about how gross it all was. But after a few minutes and finally surrendering to the fact that his clothes were toast, he was able to joke around with Rick

There were a few jokes about gripping something so large and slick. Even more jokes about how Morty probably hadn’t touch something this phallic before in his life. Morty made a comeback about the fact that it was certainly the least wrinkly. Around that point Rick took a large scoop of the goop and threw it at Morty’s head. Morty threw a good chunk of goop back and before long they were covered head to toe in the ooze.

They had to ditch their shirt and pants into a bag before getting into the car.

 

“I-I’m not dealing with that shit in the seats Morty” Rick warned.

 

So there they were, boxers, casual conversation, and Rick’s phone playing something idly in the background.

“O-ok, Rick, so this uh, I mean, you’ve been talking an awful lot of erm, you know, tall talk about these goop things b-but you haven’t erm, you know, really said what we’re gonna do with them Rick.”

“O-Oh shit!” Rick chuckled as he reached down next to him and cracked a cheap beer off of its plastic case. His fingers flicked the metal tab and a hiss shot into the room. Before Rick even made an answer, he downed the can and tossed it behind him. “O-Ok Morty see, whaAUUUOouaat your grandpa plans to do is, see is I’m gonna boil this shit down till it’s condensed down into a pretty intense gel right? See ok then what I’m gonna do, i-is dry that Zoopie ink down into a powder, which will a-also.” He leaned back a little from his seat, knees propping back up on the wheel. Rick did this so that he could show Morty with his hands what he was trying to explain “Look so this shiiIIIUGHuiit right? It’s, it make you hella sleepy right, ok well this slime makes you go from relaxed to half chub in a second flat.”

Morty looked down to his own dick to see if Rick’s rumors were true.

“Mo-Morty Christ it’s. It only works when it’s been reduced down. Shit.” Rick laughed “No but once the Zoopie powder gets added to the slime, I can compress it and make a party drug that makes you horny as shit right, but relaxes you enough to kinda, you know, let shit happen and ease into it.”

“I-I-I don’t know Rick don’t you think that might be like, you know, a, a kinda bad idea? That sounds like it could be really dangerous.” Morty huffed, leaning back in the seat “Like couldn’t someone abuse that?”

“Anyone can abuse anything Morty.” Rick grumbled, cracking another beer open and plowing through it “Look, it’s not gonna, you know puuUUOOOUeut anyone to sleep or something, it’s gonna just relax you. Like, you know when you have a really fucking good hit of some choice herb Morty, kinda like that, j-just laid back and wanna look at the stars and just chill to music.” Rick clarified and finished off the rest of his drink “The goop just excites the hormones in your brain to also give you a massive boner. Look, ok, look, be-beeeEACAeetter example of what this is gonna do.”

Rick straightened up and tossed the new can back and grabbed for a third.

“Y-you think you wanna slow down on those Rick?”

“No. Ok so you know when we’re laying in bed right, and it’s fucking early a-and I can feel your dick jamming into my thigh and, and I’m not in the fucking mood to have you just, you know, saddle up and hunker down for me to plow you into the mattress?”

Morty’s face was a deep red but he nodded along, because this had happened once or twice or five.

“Yeah, ok a-and instead I kinda, you know just smoosh our dicks together and just kinda jack us off till you cum?” Rick watched Morty squirm in his seat. He grinned, lifted a brow and nodded “Yeah, yeah, you do. It’s gonna feeEEAAAeel like that, like a lazy morning handjob.”

“O-Oh.”

 

It was quiet for a while and Rick finished off another can of some warm cheap beer.

 

“S-So um, so I mean ho-how did you learn to make this kinda stuff Rick?” Morty asked after a bit. He’s decided to put his bare feet up on the dash and was lacing his toes as well as he could, wiggling the larger toes between each other. He’s leaned his seat back a ways and was watching the stars pass overhead.

“I mean, shit it’s pretty basic chemistry M-Morty.” Rick quipped, tossing his can back. “But if you’re talking the drugs in geEEAAAeaneral it was back in my band days.” He shrugged, stretched in his seat and got about as comfortable as Morty looked. “I mean not to say I wasn’t doing designer drugs back in my early days, but Squanchy aha...” Rick got a far-away look on his face as he tried to remember the first time he took a hit of Nebulax or snorted a line of Dead-Star-Powder. “Squanchy knew how to geEEAeat the best kind of shit. That dude knew how to party!” Rick laughed.

“Y-yeah he seems kinda, you know, like, he erm, he would know how to get fucked up pretty quick.” Morty smirked and looked over at Rick

“Oh, fuck yeah he did. He had shit Morty, that would have you hear your thoughts in color if you wanted, ha ha ah, oh, o-o-oh!” He brightened up and looked straight over at Morty “He had this shit, you- y-you gotta try, no WE gotta try, it’s called Beezt right?”

“Best?” Morty looked a little dubious but he was still interested, curious as ever about Rick and his life.

“Close Morty but, n-nah dawg, no _BEEZS_ t, emphasis on bees. It simulates a hive-mind. So, ok and I know you don’t care, but with Unity, and Unitity’s type, when you fuck it, it feels it all over it’s body. You’re lick-lick-licka-lappin up at it’s juicy as fuck plumbing, all of it feels that, every little touch right? I-it can give you a bit of a god complex Morty.” Rick chuckled, looking pleased with himself as he reached down for who knew what number beer. The case was close to being empty. “AAAAAUAUAanyhow, Morty point is bees are a hive-mind kinda right? Well Beezt lets you kinda, I mean it connects your mind to another users mind. So ok look lets say you and I were a hive-mind right now. Lets just assume that.”

Morty nodded and hunkered down to watch Rick throw the last can of beer behind him.

“Ok good, you thinking about it, you and I sharing one mind. I mean it’d be a living heEEAAeaell for me Morty, you know, cause I-I-I-I’d never get anything done, I’d be trying too hard to fight myself from jacking myself off.”

Morty looked less amused and glared at Rick

“Yeah I-I-I mean that would be kinda ter-teri-te- awful Rick, too bad you wouldn’t be sober enough to get your hand around it.”

“M-Morty, shut the fuck up.” Rick hissed, but Morty was grinning. “L-Look, ok, look, see if you were mouthing off to me like that, I-I-I could just punch myself in the jaw and, and you’d feel it too. Ok? Now imagine that but with fuckin. Ok so imagine you could feel your ass getting grabbed, but also in your own hands you’d feel an ass in it. When someone fucks you, you feel like you’re also ramming them into the mattress. Someone giving you a blowie while-“ Rick trailed off, a lazy and slimy smile on his mouth.  
“Look point is we gotta get our hands on some of that shit someday, soon too.”

“O-Oh?”

 

Rick rolled his eyes, the smile on his face was less boyish excitement and instead held the weight of all of his years on his lips. A silent acknowledgement to the conversation around the corner.

“I mean you know Morty I-I-I don’t think my heart could handle that kinda shit five years from now.” Rick admitted.

Morty rolled his own eyes and smirked too, defiance against the topic at hand. Morty might have been dumb about a few things on accident, whereas Jerry purposely ignored the facts to make himself seem smart. The one thing Morty intentionally ignored and railed against time and time again was Rick’s age.

“C’mon Rick you’ll be fine, y-you’re way more active than uh, than any of the other people your age, s-so you know, you’ll be fine.” Morty argued, crossed his arms and sat back, as if that might be the end of the conversation.

“Lo-Look Morty I-I aint saying I’m exactly excited to hang up the saddle and turn down the volume on my life, and trust me, I’m not gonna waste away in some fucking chair till I go gentle into that good night Morty. B-But I also, I’m gonna go out on my own terms. A-and those terms don’t include going into cardiac arrest while I do blow outta your ass Morty.”

Morty wanted to be ashamed about what Rick said, but the bigger topic of ‘I’m gonna cut my own life short so I go out in a blaze of glory’ was creeping up on Morty’s spine more and more.

“R-Rick look it’s not, I mean, we don’t have to really, you know, kinda go into this right now. I-I-I think you’ve got at least another good twenty years on you! I-It’s gonna be fine.” Morty was still contesting.

“M-Morty I mean, fuck kiddo what do you plan to do when I’ve kicked the bucket anyhow, w-what you gonna mope around a-a-and try to go back to earth and pick up all your shitty pieces before finally realizing that this was all a big mistake?”

The word mistake hit Morty before everything else did and it made him boil under his skin. He hated the fact that they’d been close enough to fuck but Rick would still some nights drink himself to sleep, that he was still waiting for Morty to bail. That he still treated Morty like he might be some kind of boyfriend that he didn’t have the heart to break it off with so he just kept putting on his best face and waiting till they bailed.

 

Or, as the conversation was eluding to, until Rick just died.

 

“R-Rick I-“ Morty started, and then just let it die in the air. He hoped they would mourn his unfinished sentence in peace, maybe give it a good half hour moment of silence. But it wasn’t going to happen. Not when they pulled into the parking lot of their motel. This one was large enough to have a sofa and a coffee table which was good because Rick needed a place to reduce the slime down.

“You what Morty?” Rick pulled the car in and just watched him.

“I want to get inside.” Morty grumbled, before he opened up his door and slammed it shut on Rick, who, at that moment decided that he had a bottle of gin in the trunk that he could easily plow through while he worked on finishing off his flask. Following Morty’s moody lead, Rick met him at the trunk of the ship, grabbed for two of the buckets of slime, and followed Morty into the motel.

 

Apparently it took one conversation topic to accidently hurt Morty’s feelings.

 

 

It took all of about three seconds for Rick to get shitfaced.


	13. Bruises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty is pissed and Rick makes a terrible mistake.

The room smelled like rubbing alcohol

 

Morty’s nose tingled with the smell. The slime wasn’t helping matters either. Not that it smelled bad but it did have a thick scent, kind of like ozone. It hung heavy in the air and it was suffocating him. Actually, the whole motel was suffocating him. Rick was nursing his flask, and by nursing what that really meant was chugging. Morty and him had finally at least gotten washed up and now had gotten into night-clothes.

Morty was pissed about Rick’s drinking because it’d been Rick who decided to bring up the topic of his own death to the table. It was not like Morty egged him on or anything. He decided to just be an asshole and drop that little piece of shit into his lap. Now he was getting shit-faced, which mostly meant he’d be quiet and brooding and uninterested in talking much.

If there was one dynamic he wished had been kept up even if it had been a ruse, it was the fact that Rick was a lot more enjoyable drunk and pretending to be fine, than being drunk simply to kill the conversation and whatever Rick didn’t want to deal with.

“H-hey, you think maybe, you, you know, you might wanna slow down Rick?” Morty snipped. He tried to keep his own reservations about Rick’s drinking to himself, even now that they were a ‘thing’. Not because he wanted to keep him happy, but because if he didn’t pay much attention to it, it meant it might not get in the way of a quick fuck.

It meant that Rick didn’t have to _really_ deal with it, and Morty didn’t have to _really_ deal with it.

Morty had just wished that the ‘not really dealing with it’ topics extended to Morty’s denial about Rick’s age. But the second Morty had opened his mouth, Rick reeled on him.

“O-O-o oh yeah Morty? Yeah? Y-YouuUUUGU. You wanna play the big saint on this huh?” Rick shook his flask and tipped the last of it into his mouth “Fuck you. Y-y-you can’t even hand, handle, han- take the fact that I’m an 85 year something piece of shit who’s gonna kick the bucket before you’re thirty.” Rick slurred. “S-Start the, grab the slime and start separating it Mo-Morty we got shit, important shit to be doing.”

Rick kneeled down next to the bed and grabbed for that friendly bottle of gin to chase away the bitter taste of metal and warm, stale, swill down. He went to the sofa and just collapsed on it. Morty watched him, his pink skin around his eyes, the corners of his lips pulled down and the winkles in his forehead dragged down into a scowl.

“M-morty, fucking hop to it.” Rick grumbled.

Every nerve in Morty’s body felt like it was on fire, in a desperate protest against his hands reaching out to touch the goop. He scooped up one handful and jerked it into a bag. He scooped another, trying to will himself to just let this one go, to just give into Rick and maybe, maybe when it was all done and over with, they’d lay down in each other’s arms and relax, maybe Rick might mumble a small ‘Sorry baby’ to Morty and Morty would chuckle and mutter ‘Whatever Rick.’ and they’d sleep in a quiet and tired acknowledgement that they’d been assholes to each other.

But it didn’t happen. Each time the bottle of gin hit the table, each time he heard him swallow and none of them were the words he should have said to apologize, Morty felt his skin rise another degree in unchecked anger. He felt his stomach twist into itself, a rubberband that was wrapped too tight, and only another three dull thuds of the gin bottle later did it snap.

 

“Y-You know what Rick?!” Morty dunked a handful of goop back into the bucket and then just flicked the spare shit clinging to his hands into the room carelessly. It caused an already irate Rick at Morty’s start-line of a ‘fuck you’ monologue to turn him into straight out pissed off.

“N-no Morty, why- why- what- why don’t you fill me in o-on your infiiIAAAAUU- fuck, wisdom, Morty, why don’t you share your nugget of knowledge with me Morty.” Rick’s voice came between the cracks of his clenched teeth.

“God dammit Rick, I-I-I don’t l’m sick of this, I-I’m sick of you acting like such a wrinkled shit when, when things don’t go your way ok?! I-I’m pissed off a-and we’re not even gonna, you’re just gonna pretend like it’s all, what, fine? Is that it? A-And you’re already halfway through that bottle Rick, ch-christ maybe use the breaks a little huh? Y-you know maybe that’s why we’re always eating shitty food o-o-or sleeping in motels, o-or, I don’t know, m-maybe it’s because you spend all your extra credits on o-o-on drinks Rick!”

Morty was panting slightly by the end of it, but Rick was as somber as ever. Actually he seemed to sober up quickly as he watched Morty with those faded eyes. Morty knew he fucked up, but he was already a foot into the grave so he wasn’t about to stop digging that hole for himself now. Besides it was a long as hell time coming.

“What’d you expect, huh, Moooorty?” Morty winced, it sounded like a fucking insult dragged out like that and he hated it. Sometimes it was used playfully, and even then it still held the sting of being embarrassing. Now it just felt humiliating “Did you EEaaexpect a bunch of Hardy-boy-esque like adventures, Moooorty?” Rick peeled himself off of the sofa to sway over towards him, looking down that long nose of his to squint at the small minded child before him.

Morty felt like a kid again and he fucking hated the way Rick blasted away all the years he’d built up running around, adventuring and nearly getting himself killed. Anyone from Earth would have felt like a hero. Morty just felt like a kid who’d been spanked for the first time. He tried to keep Rick from knowing it though, from seeing the heart he had pounding in his throat, from the nerves that suddenly went from a fired rage to a hair-trigger set to ‘Run’ if it came to it.

“What, is this not what you expected, Mooorty? Di-did you maybe think that you’d get some kind-kinda- kin…” Rick let out a loud and throaty burp before filling the empty space in his gut with another hard pull from the bottle of gin. “Did you expect me to pull you into raAAAuandom hugs, Mooorty? Did you expect me t-to-to kiss your temple when you got scared, Morty, huh? D-did, did, were, were you looking for that fuckin dream version of me?” He snarled as he leaned down to Morty’s level and jammed two hard fingers into his sternum.

It had Morty stumbling back a few steps, but he kept himself upright and sneering back at Rick.

“Oooh, touOOOUEAAaoough guy, huh? Y-you gonna act like you never thought of it, huh, Moooooooorty?” Rick was getting closer again, snaking up to Morty like some kind of amalgam of all of Morty’s self-doubt, all of his confusion and every late night he sat up thinking about what he was even doing with this life, all wearing Rick’s face and parading around as a human 

 

It made Morty’s blood run cold.

It made Morty hate Rick for the moment.

 

“You thought it was gonna be all cute and shit huh? Well you’re fuckin wroOOOong and you should feel like the biggest dipshit in the multi-verse for it.” Rick took another swig “A-a-and the fact that you’ve been hoping for it, o-oor waiting for it’s proof you’re the biggest fucking moron out here, Mo-Morty. This,” He poked Morty’s chest again “Is what you get. This,” he jammed him again, “Is all there is Morty. A fucking alcoholic, petty, dangerous, man on his last few death-rattles who wanted to get his dick wet in his fucking grandson because maybe Summer’s right, maybe it was sick and wrong enough that it got my gears going.” He shoved at Morty’s shoulder. Morty kept taking it, never cowering and not backing down. He just waited. “You- you’re saddled up with a genius who’s wasting his last few years dicking around with a trophy boyfriend. T-That’s all you are Morty, a tight ass to show off a-and a fucking stupid one who w-wont ask when it’s time to go home be-because you never think. Morty you never think that far ahead!”

Morty was snarling as he watched Rick,

“Y-you’re fucking drunk, Rick. G-give me that, a-and go the fuck to sleep.” Morty reached out for Rick’s bottle, and he was wicked quick about it.

Granted, Morty had it right, Rick’s hand eye coordination was shit when he was plastered. So when Morty reached out for the bottle, Rick undershot his dodge and Morty’s hand wrapped around his wrist easily enough.

“Ha- haha- wha-what Morty you think, you think cause you’re big and tall a-a-and older what, what you can k-kick my ass huh?”

“Rick, give me the fucking bottle.” Morty snarled, puling Rick’s arm forward.

His hand was tight, strong and big. It was nowhere near the hand Morty had on his wrists when they had met. He’d forgotten, he’d always mixed them up in his addled head, seeing the boy he knew and loved back in the day, the kid he’d become enraptured with, and then this sack of shit and bad life choices. Not that he didn’t love post-high school Morty any less, no he loved him just the same, but their love was complicated and wrong and it was both of them just lying to each other. He knew it and rather than try and talk some fucking sense into the kid, he just took another hit because they’d both become so wrapped in each other.

“H-How about you FUCK off, Morty?!” Rick barked, jerking his hand out to try and shake off Morty.

 

* * *

 

 

The sound that thundered in the room was dull and quiet. It blanketed the entire space and it consumed the very air around them. It was soft and sounded more like glass hitting the carpet, but the peppered clap of Morty’s skin hitting the bottle.

 

That was what rang so heavy in Rick’s ears.

 

His hand eye coordination was shit. Instead of jamming his hand forward and over Morty’s head, he jammed it straight into Morty’s face at full speed. The bottom of the bottle collided with Morty’s nose. Morty’s hands were around Rick’s wrist but they were lose, slowly pulling away to check on his face. Rick stopped breathing and the only noise that was left to fill the room was the echo of Rick’s smack.

Blood pooled down Morty’s nose quickly and while there were tears rolling down Morty’s face, it was more to do with the fact that he’d been beaned in the nose than it had to do with him being actually scared or upset.

No that would come in the form of the look Morty gave Rick.

Those large brown doe eyes that Morty had been flashing Rick for too long, the same ones that trusted Rick to the bitter end, even if they did hold reservations. They turned to hard rock. Looking at Rick like he was lower than sewage. Morty was looking at Rick the way Rick had always expected him to. To hate and mistrust him because that’s what he SHOULD have felt. He should have hated Rick and mistrusted him because Rick knew he wanted to touch Morty and bury his nose in his hair and hold his small body close to his own, but never once did he fucking get help, or get the fuck out of Morty’s life. He should have felt wary of him because he was indulging Morty rather than pushing him the fuck away.

Atta boy, Morty.

Rick didn’t say sorry, he didn’t say anything. He just watched in resignation as Morty pushed Rick out of the way, grabbed the keys and-

Well ok at that point Rick started to move. Morty with the keys was, well it wouldn’t be good. He tried to rush after him but he caught his leg on the edge of the coffee table, the bottle flying out of his hand and a bucket of slime nearly tipping over. Rick reached for that to try and stabilize it, but the second he was back on his feet, Morty was out of the door, slamming it behind him

“M-MORTY!” Rick hissed, running to the door and throwing it open.

 

He was just in time to watch Morty pull the ship up and out of the parking lot, effectively ditching him in a shitty hotel in the middle of nowhere.


	14. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick fucks up another job and decides to take it out on Morty. AKA More adventures in drunk texting

It had been a week, three days and exactly 10 hours and Morty still hadn’t come home.

 

Rick fucking hated not having his car. It was not something he could just go out and get, or at least not without risking damaging the ship or who or whatever was in it.

Rick was sitting on the edge of his mattress, watching a small blip of light on one of his many watches. X, Y, and Z coordinates changing their numbers on the rim like a slot machine. Underneath the rolling numbers, it had a tag: Alpha-93Z.

“Fucker isn’t even out of this galaxy.” Rick muttered to himself, pissed that Morty had his god damn car. He was praying to God that Morty knew how to program the GPS, and that the GPS would actually listen to him. That maybe Morty got some fucking sense in him and maybe was going home. He wanted to feel relieved. He did when he started drinking some straight vermouth.

He forced himself to just let it the fuck go. Morty would be better, Morty would be better than Rick, he’d have a nice wife, he’d have a fucking shitty kid or something, another white dog from the pound that he’d insist to never get fixed. He’d have some job that was safe and normal. He’d probably flirt with his co-workers and end up divorced after trying to fuck some guy at a bar twenty years down the line.

 

Actually who fucking cared.

 

Rick groaned and rubbed his face.

“You fucking wanted this.” He reminded himself. Rick wanted Morty to get fucked by other people, to lead some kind of normal life. He knew the kid was young and if Summer could deal with being earthbound, Morty could suck it up and do it too. Besides, Rick was fine without Morty. Not that that mattered either, obviously Rick would be just fine on his own without Morty. He did it for a million years before Morty was even a thought in the back of Beth’s mind. He could do it now, cloaking device or no.

It would be easy!

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn’t easy.

It was hard as balls. Rick got a connection with an old friend who said he’d be willing to pay top dollar for a machine that could record dreams. Rick, having already made something like this, knew all he really needed to do was get his hands on a subcondermal-recorder and a VR helmet and he’d be golden. The biggest problem in all of this was that the subcondermal-recorder was something he had to jack from a universe that was rather heavily guarded with Federation drones.

Now, while Rick was nowhere near the dimension where he’d been incarcerated, he was on the other hand about to go into a place where he was still wanted, and he was sans a Morty.

“No big deal Sanchez. You got this.”

He did not got it and he did get shot at. A lot. He didn’t take any full on wounds, but he did get grazed and he had to sacrifice the recorder to save his own hide. After that he figured that maybe he could just make one of his own. How hard could it be really?

Very hard, apparently.

It required parts from several different universes and it was going to take at least a month for all of it to be pieced together. Rick got halfway through gathering up the bits before finally he just faked it. He made the VR look a little more ‘futuristic’ and he added a small function that would effectively put someone to sleep, create a dream out of a bunch of algorithms and paste it together like a story and then save it.

It was actually pretty damn ingenious for someone who only had a few days to build it.

The kicker was that his client knew damn well what Rick was up to, and almost shot him on the spot over it. Rick was quicker on the draw as per usual. Rick usually, without Morty to worry about, was able to get the business end of things done. Honestly, it wasn’t until Morty and Summer that he started taking into consideration someone else, started thinking about more than just number one and instead started wondering about a partner in crime.

Well, as of right now, his partner in crime was still floating around aimlessly, or so said the watch that kept track of which dimension his Morty was in and exactly what point in that dimension he was. Look, he’d feel bad about the chip he’d injected into Morty when he was 13, but you know what? He honestly couldn’t really be bothered with it. It was letting Rick know he wasn’t wandering towards some sun. Still though, Rick was once more broke (-ish, he had enough credits to get him what he needed for a while, but it was mostly on another Rick’s card) and irritated at the day’s events.

You know there was a time when Morty and he just went on adventures. They just went and got whatever Rick needed to complete something for himself to sell off later, or they went and explored a new dimension for fun, or they delivered an invention he was working on, or they got some kinda job completed for a client. Morty would scream and yell but by the end of the day he was, mostly, fine. He was different than before, but alive and put together.

Now things had gotten so complex and complicated that Rick was trying very hard not to think about it. But that was hard. It was hard not to lay in the SAME shitty motel he was boiling down the gel in and think about where he sat in all of this. Rick didn’t like to be alone with his thoughts. He, despite all of his complaining, enjoyed not having to think about himself and where he sat emotionally. Fuck that, he could drink his idle thoughts quiet and drown out the remaining noise with whatever asinine questions Morty might have.

 

But Morty wasn’t there. He wasn’t there and God dammit, that was a good thing.

 

It had to be a good thing.

 

It needed to be.

 

See, Rick felt like a monster. He felt like the thing the news warned parents of. A lecher living in your neighborhood, destroying and corrupting the people around him. Your best friend who’d stab you in the back after you watched him take all your loved ones for himself. Rick had had other Morty’s before this one, it was pretty easy to tell. And honestly, it was a rarity to find a Rick that hadn’t burned through at least ONE Morty.

It was rarer still to find a Rick who hated the part of him that let his Morty down. But that wasn’t the problem at hand. The problem was that Morty had wrapped his small little fingers around his heart and twisted him into the dark thing. Rick took a deep sip of who even knew anymore, Whiskey? Schnapps? Brandy? He didn’t know, it had a burn in the back of his throat and it tethered him to the ground. He remembered the moment Morty’s smile made his own breath hitch. He remembered the second that Morty’s hands wrapped around his hips. His head, rubbing into his ribs for protection, was met with a disgusting want to pull him into his arms and keep him at his side forever.

He remembered his lowest point was feeling jealous that he was going to be one-upped by a bimbo with red hair and a short skirt. He was envious that Jessica had caught Morty’s attention. Rick didn’t remember much the few days after that, because honestly, how fucking petty and sad did he have to be, really? He made a promise to himself to not, never, ever let on that he wanted Morty. That he’d thought about him like that. It killed him. It destroyed the already threadbare edges of Rick.

The idea of it, the idea of someone else who might do that to Morty... Fuck he killed King Jellybean dead in his tracks.

He took another hard knock back on his drink in memory of that little fucked up incident.

Rick walked a weird line with Morty where he vied for his attention, wanting to be the center of the kid’s universe, but then realizing he was doing it for the wrong fucking reasons, and pulling back. Morty was supposed to want Jessica, not Rick. Rick wasn’t supposed to want Morty, he was supposed to want the best for him.

For him to be better than him.

 

* * *

 

 

Rick was very fucking drunk.

He was very fucking drunk and he was very fucking interested in letting Morty know exactly how he felt about all of this. Which had amazing results when Morty had done it to Summer. It had amazing results any time Rick got drunk and decided to just yell at the people he loved. It worked wonderfully for Unity right? It worked with Rick’s wife so many years back.

He pulled his phone up and took a deep breath, squinting at the screen. He was a damn fine texter on a bad day, so he should be about average when texting this shit faced.

“Ok you little shit. You threw some low blows so here’s the fuckin skinny. You’re a sack of shit.”

Right. Yes. This was a good start. Tell it how it is Rick!

“You’re a sack of shit who’s dumber than bricks Morty. You know that? And you stole my fucking car. You don’t even know where the fuck you’re going do you? You’re just gonna sit out there in space and just mope around till either I come save you or someone comes to bail you out like you always do, Morty. Well, you know what? Fuck that. You get to sit out there alone till you figure it out yourself!” Rick was jamming his thumbs into his phone pretty hard at this point.

“You know the kinda headache you give me, you’ve been GIVING me?! You’ve been a pain in my ass since you were a teen Morty, you know that? Did you? I don’t think you did, you literal walking 2x4! You’ve been nothing more than a giant ‘fuck you’ around every corner, you little shit, and now here you are riding my dick like it’s no big deal, like whatever Rick don’t fucking worry about it, I don’t care you’ve been thinking about this since I was a teenager, it’s totally fine. IT’S NOT YOU DUCKING CLOD!!!!”

Rick leaned his head back and rubbed at his brow. He hated having to spell shit out for people. He wished they’d just keep the hell up with him. He hated talking out every inch of himself. But fuck it, look, Morty wouldn’t ever pick up on it on his own and yeah, while Rick said it was ok for Morty to wake up one day and realize just how fucked up this all was, and hate him afterwards for it, he at least wanted Morty to feel shitty about hating him. Because Rick already hated himself enough for the both of them.

Also, Rick was petty.

And that was what petty people did. They made everyone feel like they deserved the bruise petty people gave them, then they made them feel worse about having that bruise. And Rick was going to make Morty feel like shit for walking out, he was gonna make him understand just how bad Rick had wanted him and how that fucked up his liver more than the 50 something years of wandering around doing hard-drugs and harder drinks.

“You’re a dumb fuck, Morty. Ok, so fuck you.” Though it was getting a little hard to keep throwing punches when Morty wasn’t texting back. The little shit was probably ignoring them, or had his phone turned off. Maybe he had it on and was trying to google-maps his ass back to Earth. Like a fucker. Morty wasn’t that dumb though.

 

Probably.

 

“Answer your phone you little shot. Or are you adding me to your ‘too heavy to deal with’ pile of problems that’s been growing bigger every day, huh? I want you to read these, let em really soak into that dense fucking head of yours Morty. I want you to know exactly what I am, and then I want you to say it out loud to yourself. I want you to say ‘I’m fine fucking my grandpa, who’s wanted to fuck me for way too long.’ Let that shit in your mouth a little, see how it tastes. It’s worse than my personal blend lemme tell you.”

Rick groaned and just dropped the phone on his chest. Fuck it. Morty was going to more than likely text him ‘Delete my number’ because, again, props to Summer, that was a fucking great end all line.

You know what though, fuck that. Rick picked up his phone and texted Summer because no one tells Rick no without at least getting pestered until he got bored and moved on.

“You’re brothers probably trying to head home and will fly his happy sass into a sun. Hope your happy, the road trips over.”

It was quiet in the motel. Just the sound of Rick’s own slightly wheezy breath, and the sound of cargo-ship pulling to a stop and then footsteps past the door. It was too quiet. His thoughts rattled around in his head like a caged animal drunkenly beating at the bars.

 

His phone buzzed.

 

It was Morty responding to his wall of text, which was almost what he sent, a few cosmetic typos, really. Unlike Morty he could actually do ok while pickled.

“How long did I have till you put me back on earth Rick?”

“Did you mean ‘how long until you get back to earth’? because it’s a long ways, Morty, holy shit.”

“No. I mean how long until you took me back yourself because you got bored.”

Rick scoffed and thought about just not answering. He lasted all of a couple minutes before hastily grabbing his phone again to reply.

“I was gonna wait till you decided to go yourself you little turd.”

“Ok, but I don’t want to.”

“You will.”

“You don’t know that Rick! Ok? Have you thought about what I wanted here? At all?”

“Yeah you wanted a gross as fuck craggy old man who’s been thirsting after you for like, a long while now.”

“Yeah no that’s. I mean yeah there’s that too. But that’s not the part of you I like.”

“Yeah, you like all the happy-go-lucky parts of me, which you’ll soon realize aren’t ME Morty, they just, show up every once in a while.”

“No, Rick, you’re not listening to me!”

“Nah, I hear you LOUD and clear Morty!”

“DROP YOUR PHONE. LET ME TEXT. THEN PICK IT UP AND READ IT. HOLY SHIT!!!”

Rick lifted a brow at his phone and muttered out to himself.

“Holy shit, fine, Morty”

 

“Look I know how much of a shit you are Rick. I have a million terrible moments with you, you drink way too fucking much, you never deal with any of your... idk shit?? You just sweep it all under a rug and pretend like you’re too good for them. You’re bossy, you’re dangerous, and you’re kind of a bad guy, Rick. Like I’m actually almost positive that you’re a villain and I’m your henchmen. Like, I think there’s nothing about that that isn’t true here.

  
“I didn’t…

  
“You’re right I didn’t know that you were thinking about me like that, and I honestly didn’t start thinking about you that way till I was 17-ish. But look. Ok, I don’t really fucking care. You know what you didn’t do? You didn’t just do what you wanted. I know you think that like, now that you’re fucking me, it’s like you’re just, like it’s the same thing as making a move on me when I was younger. But it’s not, so fuck off. Rick I know how shitty you are, ok? I like it. I like how old you are, I like how we get into these life or death places, I like the way you make me feel. Do you believe me?”

Rick, after the phone stopped going off every three seconds, finally looked at it and huffed, eyes trying to focus on each word as his brow curved inwards and his forehead crinkled in concentration.

Leave it to Morty to drag this into some emotional pocket of dialogue.

“Morty, you don’t know what makes you happy. You’re not even out of your teen years, technically.”

“I didn’t ask that…”

“Ok, well but all this time you’ve been dicking around with me, you coulda been banging some sweet perky breasted chick who’d probably be into giving you roadhead. You know, living a normal life?”

“I told Summer, so I might as well tell you too Rick, I’d actually hang myself at Dad’s age if I did that. You know it too, you know I’d either go looking for danger or I’d end up having some affair with a college professor who’s way too old for me, to kinda fill in the hole you left.”

“You’re a fucking sap, Morty.”

Morty took forever to respond, and Rick took a few more drinks from his bottle of whatever was within arms distance.

“Rick, I don’t want you to just keep me around because you don’t know what to do with me anymore. Either you’re in it to win it, or, I don’t know, please drop me off and don’t, don’t for a second come back.”

Rick sat looking at his phone for a bit, pondering for a moment if it might be a good idea to just cut ties then. He knew why Morty said don’t come back. It wasn’t because he’d be angry at Rick, or never forgive him. Nah, it’s because he’d force himself into a ten step program in order to break the addiction he had to him. Summer would help him and they’d figure it out. But the moment, the split second Rick came back into his life, Morty would gravitate towards him. Rick was a black hole on Morty’s life and right now he was at the cusp of the event horizon, about to tip into the point of no return.

 

Rick thought about if he could do it.

 

He wondered if he could find a way to deal without Morty. He knew he could make it so Morty didn’t see him. He could stop in on his life, check out who he was dating, who was fucking him, who he was working for and what car he drove. But that wasn’t really cutting ties now was it?

“You know what Morty?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m really horny right now.”

Morty glanced at his own phone and squinted at it, glaring a little at the words. It took him a couple minutes to even respond.

“What?”

“You know, like, I really wanna get fucked, ok, Morty? Look, Granpa’s really fucking drunk right now, and he doesn’t wanna deal with this shit. You’re allowed to do what you want. If you go home, guess what? It’s done, you’ll never see my face again, and that’s that. You come back, a-and you’re in it to win it, you’re signing on for heavy drinking, messy, gassy, old dude dick who’s probably reaching the end of his shelf-life. You got that?”

“Ok.”

“But look, mostly, Morty, I fucking love your ass ok?”

Morty again had to just lean back in the car and look his phone over. It could have been a way for Rick to try and entice him. To say ‘hey look if you choose me you probably get your dick sucked’ but he doubted Rick was that mani- actually no, Rick was that manipulative, but he wasn’t this obvious about it.

Morty looked out at space, at the mass of black that had been in front of him for a while. He’d packed the car on a remote breathable planet. Too small to do anything worthwhile on, but it offered a place for him to shit and eat junk-food in peace while he texted Summer about what had happened.

Summer, Beth, and Jerry all started calling him again. To be fair Morty finally decided to talk about it all to them. He answered Beth’s questions, but when she asked when he’d be coming home, he said he wasn’t sure if he would. When he asked her if she thought she might ever forgive Morty for staying with Rick, she replied in kind.

Jerry was tight lipped and didn’t have much to offer.

Summer was the same honestly.

But there he was, his cellphone finally quiet. The stars went on for miles in colors of green and blue and purple and pink and everything in-between. He thought about a life on Earth. About how he’d still hear and know about Rick, but no one but him would want to talk about Rick. He thought about his hypothetical wife and hypothetical children. He thought about trying to tell her about the adventures he went on and how the kids should at least see the stars the way he did, no lights, no nothing, just going on for miles.

Morty’s head hit the steering wheel when he reached over to grab his phone. A dumb little grin on his face.

 

 

“So, what would you do if I was there now, huh?”


	15. Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty reconsiders his life and where to go from here while Rick jerks off over the phone

Morty still hasn’t started up the ship.

 

He was kind of waiting to see where this went actually. He also wanted to make sure that he wasn’t just following his own pecker around. Rick might have been as transparent as ever about wanting to sway Morty’s vote on the whole “where do you go from here” question, but Morty wasn’t too sure of himself on not falling for it.

It was quiet on the texting line though, and for a second Morty wondered if he was being a little too forward.

 

When his phone went off though, Morty jumped, hit his head on the wheel, and fumbled to handle the phone correctly. He finally got his hands and fingers to work in tandem to answer his phone.

“H-hello?”

“Mo-MoOOAAAOorty your ass though...” Rick grumbled into the phone. “Y-you’ve got the flattest fucking ass I’ve ever seen.” He chuckled and let out a long sigh “But fuck if it isn’t, god damn if it’s not one of the best spots to slip my dick into.”

Morty huffed and felt his face get red despite the fact that Rick called his ass flat as shit.

“I-I mean it’s not, you know, it’s not that flat.”

“Morty don’t, don-do. Try not to lie to yourself Morty. It’s flatter the-than an ice rink.”

“Fuck you Rick.” Morty huffed.

“Look I’m not an ass person so I guess you-yo-you’ve got that going for you here Morty. I-I kinda, I mean, it’s hard to be an ass or boobs person anymore. O-Once you fuUUUAUucked something that just has a carapace and a wet mouth, a-and you cum buckets into that mouth, y-you kinda stop giving a shit about human traits anymore.” Rick admitted before laughing, “But god damn Morty, baby, why the fuck, with your flat as fuck ass, a-a-and your kinda, I mean, Morty you don’t really have a defined chest or muscles really, y-y-you’re kinda just uUUUuugm. You’re just gangly still. Why the fuck do you get my dick harder than it’s been in years?”

Morty could feel his face turning red. He hadn’t heard this kind of verbal attention since they first had had sex. Most of the time Rick didn’t butter Morty up with kind words and observations. He simply gripped his hips and pulled him to the bed, the wall or the table, whatever happened to be the surface of choice for the day. The fact that Rick was telling Morty all of this so openly was kind of, well it was a little embarrassing, but it was also kind of sweet.

“I-I-I don’t know Rick. I mean, maybe you got a thing for gangly brown haired boys?” Morty snorted and leaned back in his chair, eyes falling closed for a minute as his head fell back.

“Shut up Morty.” Rick laughed then practically purred into the phone. “Mm, you know what I’d do if you were where Morty? I’d hook your hips with my arm and pull you straight to the bed where I’d tear into your neck with my teeth.”

Morty’s eyes popped open. “O-oh?”

“Yeah M-MoooOOOorty. I’d sink ‘em right into your skin and leave all kinds of marks on you. I know h-how much of a fucking exhibitionist you are. Fuckin lapping up the idea of everyone seeing them hickies and wondering if they’re mine.” Rick chuckled and each breathy laugh went straight to Morty’s dick. “I’d leave a little trail of marks on your back.”

Morty was silent on his end.

“Got you all hot a bothered wi-with just that huh? Holy shit it’s only been a week Morty. Y-you’re not at half chub just thinking about me biting you are you?”

“S-Shut up Rick, c’mon it’s, look it’s-“

“HAHAHA Holy SHIT Morty!” Rick had to pull the phone away from his mouth to laugh. Morty was growing less and less enthused by the time Rick came back on the line. “L-Listen Morty look, here, listen, don’t you dare cum in your pants before I talk you though what you should be doing here o-ook Morty?”

Morty was about to fire back an angry retort, but that got him to shut right back up again.

“Yeeah you’re thinking about it huh Morty? Thinking about me telling you to undo your pants and just tug your dick dry huh?”

Morty sucked in a breath and finally leaned back on the seat again to listen to Rick growl into the receiver. “I-I-I mean, I’m not, you know, I’m not gonna tell you to stop, if, if you know, if you thought about it, thought about doing it. Tell me what to do here Rick, o-or telling me what you would do. S-s-something like that wouldn’t really bother me too much. Pretty sure I could handle it.” Morty teased. He was grinning on his end and Rick could swear he could hear his lazy and needy smile through the phone.

“Y-Yeah I don’t doubt it Morty,” Rick replied. “Hold on kiddo.” He pushed a few buttons on his own device and then let it fall onto his chest, pleased with himself that he could just lay there and enjoy not having to hold up the phone to his ear. “Got you on speaker.”

Morty looked to his own phone and mirrored the action, and put his phone on the dash of the ship when he was done.

“S-Smart idea Rick.”

“Yeah well it’s gonna make it a hundred times easier to jack off this way so…” Rick grumbled, unclipping his belt. The soft clink of metal and the slip of the leather against his pants filled the car’s silent atmosphere, and it had Morty gripping his bottom lip a little too hard in those teeth of his.

“Yeah?”

“M-Morty, what do you, you, what kinda shit do you think about when you beEEAAeat your dick huh, Morty? J-Just walk me through it.” Rick muttered, those old fingers of his no less nimble when he unclipped his slacks.

“Aa-aw jeez Rick, I mean, it changes a lot. You know? I-I think about a lot of different things.” Morty admitted as he strained his ears to catch any kind of change in Rick’s breath. His own held in anticipation for the low groan he heard seconds later.

“I mean, you know, what’s the one, Morty, the one you always go to, w-when porn just ain’t hitting that itch, y-you know. Every-Ev-EEEEAAUeveryone’s got one, tell me, Morty don’t, don’t fuckin hold out on me here.”

Morty was quiet for a second as he draped himself over the steering wheel. Mostly to have something to lean forward on, his own breath heavier as the silence dragged on. Secondly because it was cool to the touch and his face was a little warmer than he’d like to admit.

“I mean, I-it’s about you.” Morty muttered

“I know, Morty that’s why I asked, g-grandpa’s a fucking narcissist, Morty.” Rick snorted. “Now spiIEEEiill it, M-Morty.”

Morty couldn’t even be surprised. Of course Rick would want to know exactly what he did to Morty. He knew exactly what Morty did to him.

“S-So erm. T-There’s the one that I think about a-a lot where, erm. You know we’re in the car a-and you fuck me in the driver’s seat.”

“C-c’mon Morty don’t- don’t do that to me. You, you gotta get into it, don’t fucking touch the clit without any foreplay, Morty. H-how do I get you on my dick huh? H-how do I touch you, talk me off here Mo-Morty.” There was strained complaining coming from Rick, like maybe he might actually want Morty to provide something for him to stroke himself to.

Morty took his own shaky inhale and nodded.

“Ok.”

Morty exhaled.

“So, erm, we’re, you know, we’re just done doing some kinda job right? Well ok no. So we’re actually, it’s right after, you know, that one day when you. Ok so remember a few years back, I, I took a pretty hard hit a-and you ran over and covered me with your body, a-and you shot those guys, you know, a-and you helped me up from the ground? So, it’s like that. I’m breathing heavy, and, and you look like, any, like if any, anyone, someone fucks with you. Well, no ones going to make it out ok.”

“Heh, yeah, no, I remember that night Morty, clear as a whistle. Fuck you w-would like that kinda shit. Life threatening trash that gets your heart pounding.” Rick interrupted, his voice a bit lower than usual.

“W-Well, I don’t know Rick, it’s, I mean the rush is, kinda, just really big a-and I kinda like that intense side of you?” Morty chuckled “A-Any how so you pull me up and make a run for the uh, the ship, right Rick? And, well I mean, you know we get away safely. A-Any, anyhow so we’re just kinda, you know, sitting in the ship and breathing really heavy.”

Rick’s own breath was a little heavier on the line, but he said nothing in Morty’s pause.

“You an-and I, you, we kinda look each other over for a second and then yo-you pull me into your lap, a-and you’re not really graceful about it either, Rick, you just sorta drag me on your lap. A-and I’m panting really hard and you’re grinning kinda like an idiot and I start to laugh bu-but you just, you kiss me an-and it’s hard on my lips right? W-Well ok so you’re kinda biting my lower lip a-and I’m moaning into it-“

“Lemme hear it.” Rick rumbles into the phone.

“W-what right, you wanna, you want me to moan Rick?”

“Yeah, c’mon Morty how does it sound?”

Morty stopped breathing for a second and then just took in a deep breath. When he let it out though, it was low and primal, a slow moan that was only made real because he was trying to palm his dick through his jeans. A sharp little intake of air denoting the end of his little one note song.

“Fuuuck Morty that was. That- that was. I forgot how nice you sing for me baby.” Rick admitted, his own breath gasping towards the end “Keep, keep going.”

“S-so erm, you know, we kiss for a long while but then uh, you kinda, you erm, you grab my ass a-and pull me really close, and, Rick you uh, you, you bite my neck and you lick at my skin. Y-you erm, you put your fingers up my shirt and touch my nipples a little, you know, like, kinda like you just rub at them a-and that kinda, I moan some more a-and you, erm, you’re kinda just grinning as you watch me.

“But you’re hips t-they, they’re grinding up a-and mine are going down and you can uh, you get kinda bored just being all slow so you uh, you turn me around and start undoing my pants right?” Morty laughed a little and rubbed at his forehead. He felt slightly goofy for explaining this all out, but in that pause he could hear Rick, just slightly, stroking at his skin and fuck if that didn’t give Morty a huge boost in confidence.

“A-And you kinda, you pull them off, a-and you’re working on your own pants and slowly pushing them down too, a-and erm, you know I can kinda, you’ve got your erm,”

“My dick, Mo-Morty, I’m, it’s fine, keep talking.”

“You’ve got your dick kinda just, ru-rubbing up against me. You’ve got lube in your back pocket so you just slick it up and work me too w-while you’re doing it? So like, stroking yourself and me at the same time.”

Rick let out a low groan into the phone and Morty had to swallow his own down.

“Erm, then you know a-ah, erm, you, you kinda prop me up and start, erm, getting me ready, you’re really slow about it though, you kinda, you just feel around, stroking my asshole for a bit, before you kinda just, slip in your finger, a-and you’re slow about-“

“Y-yeah Morty? You thought I’d be slow a-about stretching your asshole open in your jerk-off fantasy.” He let out a shaky breath, still thoroughly enjoying himself, but never failing to get a jab in where he could “You seriously added that little tidbit in?”

“I-I’ve seen how big you are Rick, y-yeah I kinda, I worked that in there. I-It’s called foreplay! D-Do you even want me to keep goi-“

“Fuck, yes, Mo-Morty, please keep talking me off, Jesus Christ.” He chuckled “Don’t you fucking pull out on me Mort-Morty I’d- I-I-I-I’d, kick your ass or something.”

Morty snorted and listened for a bit. Rick’s heavy breathing and his low moans, he moved his own hand down and gave himself another squeeze, wanting nothing more than to just listen in on Rick.

“F-Fine so when you’re done, p-play, you know, playing around back there, you finally stuff in. A-and it’s still a bit kinda, it’s still tight, I’m still a little too, you’re too much for me Rick. A-and you go slow to kinda work me into it. B-But after a while you sit in me n-nice and pretty and I’m squeezing around you and my heads kinda pressed into the dash and you’re heads pressed into- into the seat and finally you start rolling your hips.”

“Aw god, yeah, Morty.” Rick whispered from the phone.

“Yeah you start, you know really moving, a-and I’m just letting, letting you use me a-and you’ve, somewhere here you lean around me a-and grip my hips and you know, kinda pull me onto you a-and you’ve got another hand on, in my hair and are kinda pulling s-so I don’t try and, a-and muffle my moans. A-a-and you just, you know you keep pushing into me.”

There was a low guttural noise from Rick’s end before heavy panting came over the line.

“R-Rick?”

“Yea-yeahim-m`here Morty. H-holy, gi-give me.”

Morty waited with baited breath as he listened to Rick, and then finally grinned.

“D-Did you cum?! T-That early?!”

“You- y-you shut that fucking mouth o-of-“ Rick panted and grumbled, sounding like he was shifting around “You shut that mouth`a yours Morty. N-no, literally no one asked you.”

 

 

Morty smiled to himself and then looked back out, at all the stars, all the colors and the expanse of land in front of him. The sound of Rick’s breath filling the spaces around Morty. He thought about Earth again and he thought about his parents. How disappointed they all where.

In the spaces between Rick’s breaths, Morty weighed it all. He took the home he’d be leaving, the family he’d be estranging, the life he’d never get back. The wife he’d miss out on and the kids he’d loose too. He thought about the twenty years he might get with Rick and nothing more.

 

Morty turned the car over and grabbed for his phone.

 

 

“You still at the same Motel?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all SO MUCH for waiting as long as you did for these updates. I should be finishing this fic in the next month! You have all been SO supportive and amazing and lovely and Im #Blessed to have had you here for the journey!


	16. Laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick and Morty are gross and someone needs to do laundry.

Things had started to settle between Morty and Rick.

 

Honestly, it was a god send because the two honestly worked better in tandem than in opposition. It had been a few months since Morty walked out on Rick. And it had been a week since he last had a text conversation with Summer, who was beyond livid that Morty even considered going back to Rick after a bottle hit his fucking nose.

But look, ok, it was an accident, plain and simple.

Summer mentioned that’s what all abuse victims said and it sat heavy in Morty’s throat for all of a day before he learned to swallow that down too. There’d been a lot he’d learned to just let go of. He learned to let go of life on Earth, honestly he’d never been super attached to it, but he had been a factory of endless what-ifs.

What about my life after Rick, what about the job I’ll need to get, what about my hypotheticals. Rick was helping a lot with that as well.

“I mean, I can’t leave you out here fending for your own stupid self,” as Rick so gracefully put it.

So Rick had him doing things that Rick didn’t really deem important until now. Rick finally taught Morty how to take apart, clean, reassemble and load two common federation class A plasma blasters. He started him there and said that if he could master that shit than he could move on to big-boy guns. Rick taught Morty how to check up on the car, to see if it was running smoothly and how exactly things were connected.

You know the funny thing was, when Rick tested Morty on this, he passed most times with flying colors.

They’d been moving around from place to place again, mostly because they kept trashing their motels. With Rick still working on condensing the slime into a thick paste, each time they finished setting up shop the room they’d been staying in was coated in a thick and sticky film from the steam the slime let off. This of course meant that they themselves got coated in a thick layer of their own grime and in turn their clothes.

So that basically meant that while Rick was keeping a close eye on the goop’s consistency, Morty was on laundry duty. Honestly he didn’t mind either, he actually had grown to love the chore when he was put on it back in the day. He’d originally had vacuum duty but after Summer was almost attacked by a Floopoo that had attached itself to the inside of Morty’s shirt, it was decided that because Morty and Rick’s clothes were the worst, they’d have to take care of the laundry.

It was shuffled onto just Morty because fuck that, Rick had better things to do.

And old habits died hard, so it was easy to get into the swing of shit, which was, quite literally, grab clothes up off the floor, ponder if that stain on them was from food or lube, and really you actually have no idea how hard that is to tell apart. The problem was Morty wasn’t the doting house-wife of the two. Neither of them were. And it wasn’t until they were wearing the same crusty shirt for the fourth day that Morty finally remembered that soap was a great invention not only for the body, but for the shit you put over your body as well.

Today was one of those days, only Morty had a problem. Which was that he’d run out of boxers just the other day. And yes, it’s true, commando was a state he could be in while wearing his last pair of jeans and nothing else. But he was actually a little uncomfortable with just that. He’d already decided to wear a hoodie for a shirt rather than risk going out with nothing. It really didn’t matter, but Morty still felt exposed at times.

So what do you do when you have no boxers but you need some kind of underwear?

Well you wear the blue lacey underwear your grandpa got you obviously.

 

* * *

 

The underwear was originally a joke to be honest, it had been purchased at a planet-side ship stop and the only reason it was bought was because Morty was being a smart ass about a the difference between the original production of some song from a band Rick did not give a shit about, and the new cover another band Rick could not bring himself to care about did. So in order to get Morty to stop talking without being a total asshole, was to grab a gross pair of lacy panties and throw them into the purchase when Morty wasn’t looking.

On the other hand as soon as they got out of the door, Rick held them up in front of Morty, pulling the band taught in front of him,

“H-Hey Mo-Morty, you think these are your size huh?” He grinned wicked and wide as he watched Morty stop dead in tracks and lean back away from the garments. They were a powder blue, white trim around the edge and a paisley pattern made of lace around the front and back. “I mean, your ass is too flat for ‘em but I-I think you could make it work.”

“R-Rick, a-aaw jeeez, Rick what the fuck?!” Morty growled, his face turning a nice shade of pink as he grabbed for them and shoved them into his pocket as fast as he could

“W-What Morty, I-I mean, look they had them in red too b-but lets be reeEEEAAAeal here, you look fucking terrible in- in- with red a-a-and look I hate to break it to you b-but yellow isn’t very popular in the crotch zone Mor-Morty. Makes it look like you, like you might have peed.”

“RICK!” Morty wasn’t angry, just, well mortified. He was not having any of Rick’s shit as he pushed him towards the car to get out of the line of sight or ears distance of the stop. “C’Cmon you’re- you- you’re being gross.”

“Oh shit, me?!” Rick feigned shock as he laughed and got in the car.

“Y-you know I’m not gonna wear this shit right Rick? I-I’ll look like, a-a like, I’ll look stupid.”

“Mabye, never know till you try it.”

* * *

 

Well today was the day to try it Morty supposed. He slipped into them after getting out of his shower. (Which was just a square you stepped into, it filled slowly from the bottom with a red liquid that turned into a thick gel and then, slowly turned into a steam and left Morty feeling cleaner than he’d ever felt. He did on the other and smell like juice. No definable flavor of juice either, just juice.) He put one foot in and then the next and finally slid them up.

Actually they fit alright. They did sag a little in the back, but you know, he didn’t have anyone to answer to but God about his lack of curvature. But when he looked back and down he didn’t feel like it was the worst think he’d been trough. He threw on his last pair of clean(ish) pants and the hoodie and set to work getting their clothes all ready to be washed.

Morty spent most of the day just playing phone games and watching TV. Rick loomed around to watch him play a puzzle game for a bit, but then stole the phone away from Morty to prove that it was easy to solve. Which it was, and Rick beat it within a few minutes. He joined Morty on the sofa and they both passed out till Morty’s own watch (a gift Rick had gotten him only a few weeks ago) went off and alerted Morty that he needed to switch loads.

That was pretty much the day, Rick got up when his own alarm went off and expressed that it was time to check on the slime.

They’d finally call it a night, packing up the last tub of uncondensed slime into the car, as well as the several tubes of the gel they’d gotten. The Zoople (zoopie if you were an asshole, Rick had corrected Morty a few days ago) ink still needed to be turned into a powder but-.

“That’s a much more complicated process and it’s gonna, we’re gonna need to camp it out on a planet to do that shit Morty.”

Morty grabbed his first duffelbag filled with trinkets. It was getting heaver with more and more stuff that he’d kept on him. Shit Rick kept making fun of him for, but also noted for a while that maybe it was time he start thinking about clearing out his old bunker as a permanent place for them to stay now that Beth and Jerry weren’t planning on calling the Council dogs on them.

Rick grabbed his own and then followed Morty into the motel room one last time,

“Y-YooOOEEUUou grab everything you need Morty?” Rick pulled a sip from his flask and double checked if he himself had missed anything,

“J-just gonna grab my bag, i-its just-“ Morty leaned down to reach under the bed, and low and behold Rick caught sight of those lacy beauties on Morty’s lower back. It was flush against his skin like some kind of plaque for a tramp-stamp that would never be. It probably wouldn’t have even been seen, but these jeans never fit quite right on Morty and his jacket was a bit small for him so it was doing him no favors.

 

“J-Jack pot.” Rick laughed as he snuck another sip from his flask.

“W-What?” Morty leaned up to ask what Rick muttered but before he even knew what the hell was going on, he was pressed straight into the mattress, an elbow hard on his shoulders and a hand slipping into his pants. For a second a fear gripped him so hard and so powerful he trashed for his life against Rick.

Rick had dealt with this before, so he was next to Morty’s ear in a second, whispering,“Shh baby, hey just, I gotcha, you’re fine.” He growled the words before kissing the shell of Morty’s ear and nuzzling his nose into that forest of brown curls. “So wa-what’s with the lace Morty?”

“I” Morty relaxed, letting Rick explore, and fuck did he ever. Those cold fingers trailed along the curve of his spine and down to his ass, a single finger dipping into the curve of his cheeks, just past the tailbone and right before Rick needed to splay his ass. It was warm and soft and all too inviting for Rick fingers, and with the way Morty was pushing back he seemed eager for Rick to explore a little more.

“Y-You gonna finish that thoOOOught Morty?” Rick purred.

“I ran ou-outa some, som. I ran outta erm, boxers, a-and you know, I-I just, these were in my bag s-still.” Morty whispered into the bed they’d just finished flipping the sheets and blanket on. His fingers gripped at the blankets and Rick was too pleased to see Morty more than willing to make the time for him just before they had to bail.

“Huh.. Y-you know I can’t really see m-much of these while you got these jeans on Morty. I uh, you know, I wanna see how they look on you.” Rick chuckled, his hand removing itself from Morty’s backside, marking its departure by hooking a finger around the elastic band and snapping it against Morty’s eager skin.

“Y-yeah Rick?” Morty was panting. He pushed himself up, flipped over, and began working on his pants in a hurry.

“Ho-Holy shit Morty be a little bit, slow down a second.” Rick chuckled “L-Learn some fucking grace Morty. H-Here” He pulled Morty up and switched places with him, sitting now on the edge of the bed while Morty stood in front of Rick, his fingers no longer on his jeans. “S-Shirt off first Morty.”

Morty blushed, but he undid the zipper to his jacket easy enough. Morty wasn’t going to grow much more than he already was, which pissed Morty off something terrible. He would forever be about six inches shorter than Rick. But he was still taller than most of the girls in his class (last he could remember). His shoulders were broad and angular, his collarbone jutting out slightly as it trailed into a pretty easy to define chest. His arms were still rail thin, but his hands and wrists at least held some more weight to them now that he’d finally been helping Rick full time.

Morty’s stomach wasn’t flat, not with the trash Rick and Morty ate on the regular, but there wasn’t a dip on his hips or anything extra on the side of him. He looked like a swimmer who’d stopped going to team meetings about a year ago. Or the pool even. Morty stood there as Rick looked him over, that expanse of cream skin, the small pockets of acne on his shoulder or jaw peppering him in pink, and the already red blush trailing over his face and down his neck, it had Rick biting his lips to keep from getting too eager.

“There you go Morty, g-give `em a show, make, make `em wanna see what else you got going for you. Jeans kiddo, nice and eEEAaasy.”

Morty’s fingers went easy enough around the waistband of his pants, coming together to meet at the button of his jeans. He watched Rick eye him up and down as he slowly worked the button and then popped it open. His fingers, thick and well worked themselves, knuckles as pronounced as Rick’s from popping them so often, fumbled around the fly for a moment, before finally grabbing the damn thing and unzipping his jeans. He pushed the two sides of his jeans away to reveal his own half chub straining against those lacy fucking panties.

Rick’s eyes were staying on the fucking prize as he just nodded in appreciation.

“S-See that’s how you dooOOOUuoo  a strip-tease Morty.” He chuckled, closed his eyes and finally pried himself away from Morty’s body. “Fuck, ok, ok, we gotta get going Morty, put your- put your shit back on.” He didn’t sound too convinced himself.

“A-Aw jeez Rick, really? I-I mean, after all of that we’re, we, you’re not gonna-“

 

“I’m gonna break in the next motel Morty, Christ, but the loOUUAUuonger we waAEaiite the less I’m interested.”


	17. Soaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick gets Morty really dirty and Morty hates a lot of things right now.

Much to Rick’s chagrin, compressing the dried Zoople ink and the Slime into what looked like an ecstasy like pill was a lot harder than he’d expected.

 

The compression was easy actually, he’d already blended the two together into one batch that he’d personally test, and all he needed to do was fill the little compactor with the gel and ink and wait. The problem was that he couldn’t get it hot enough on his own. He needed the power of a fucking sun to harden this gel.

So rather than perhaps grab some kind of bulb that might simulate that kind of heat, or several perhaps, no Rick decided it was theoretically possible to condense a sun and harness it into a bulb.

“I need, I need some shit first though Morty…” Rick started.

“Y-You know Rick I’m not, I’m not gonna. I mean ok look, this seems like a pretty great thing but like, haven’t you been technically working on this drug forever now? I kinda feel like we’ve been building it up for a few, for a w-while and I just, I mean, couldn’t we just kinda, not?” Morty’s voice was small and from under two layers of blankets. He was comfy in their new motel, one that wasn’t layered in steam from their little science project, and honestly he didn’t want to leave. It was cozy and warm and these sheets didn’t ask him to put on pants and risk his life after he’d just heated them up with his body.

Rick watched him for a bit, amused for all of six seconds before getting bored. He stood up and used the edge of the bed to help him up, which was mostly a ruse because the second he was up the hand that was on the bed suddenly turned into a fistful of blankets. Rick was unforgiving in ripping them off of the bed to rob Morty of heat and comfort, and instead expose him to the cold air of the room.

The pantlessness was a bonus.

“AW JEES, RICK, C’MON Y-YOU COULD HAVE-“

“Get up Morty w-we got shiiIUUUEEuiit to- shit to do!” Rick huffed, dropping the blankets on the ground as he headed towards the door.

 

* * *

 

 

Much to Morty’s chagrin, shit to do meant having to go all over the multiverse to grab supplies that, to him, made no sense.

They stopped in a dimension that smelled like low-tide and vomit. They spent their time there gathering sand, which, when it was disturbed smelled about a hundred times worse. After carting that around Rick moved them into another dimension that was as hot as the worst summer you could possibly imagine. Morty could feel his body start to sweat itself out the second they stepped in. Rick was greeted by a thing, large and wiggling and covered in sweat. It hugged the both of them and Rick started to talk shop.

After about ten minutes of that, Morty was drenched in his own sweat and that of the creature. Smelling like a tide-pool, Rick came up and admitted they needed a few other things. One was a mineral that smelled like sulfur. It was harvested by standing above holes in the ground that literally shot plumes of this dust into the air

“Like a fart Morty s-so you should be all over this. J-Just think of your ex-boyfriend.”

Morty was not amused and almost hurled twice when he wasn’t fast enough to move his head out of the blast zone of one of these plumes of rancid fart powder. When that was said and done Rick needed to grab another thing, out somewhere in space. It was a kind of water that was thick and oily.

“Just like, two jugs’ll do I’m sure.” Rick shrugged and handed two buckets to Morty

“C-Cmon Rick why, w-why do I gotta do this huh?” Morty griped. He was in no mood and honestly this looked like garbage. The water was a thick brown green and held a sheen over it like an oil spill. There were things floating and bobbing in the water and it looked disgusting. It smelled like wet garbage as well.

“Because Morty, I-I-I don’t want to.” Rick answered plainly, pulling a hard drink from his flask before Morty ripped it from his hands and took his own sip.

“F-Fuck you Rick you know that? Yo-You’re being a huge asshole about this a-a-and I’m not so sure I wanna help either. You know? You ever think about that? I don’t wanna wade into that shit!” Morty jammed a finger towards the pond and flailed his arms in the air afterwards “I mean, fuck Rick we got a lot banking on this stupid drug bit a-a-and I get the feeling it’s not even gonna be worth it, you know? Like it’s gonna fall a little flat when we finally get to it!”

Rick rolled his eyes so hard they almost had their own gravitational pull.

“Fourth wall breaking sack of fucking trash aint gonna help out when shit gets messy but you’re gonna expect some kinda fuckin blowsie after this like the gross ass ‘nice guy’ fuck you are.” Rick snapped under his breath as he grabbed his own bucket and started towards the water. He got waste deep, paused, turned around and held his hands in the air,

“OH WOW MOOOORTY, IT WAS SO HARD, DOING THIS, GETTING INTO THE WATER, WOW, Y-YOUUUGH, YOU GONNA HELP NOW?!”

Morty glared back and rolled his own eyes,

“Fourth wall breaking, you fuckin’, constantly ugh! Y-you sun-dried turd.” Morty muttered before heading into the water himself.

 

* * *

 

They went back to the heated dimension where Rick’s friend was. Rick had a bunch of suction cup marks along his neck and arms. Morty had them around his belly and face. The water indeed smelled, tasted, and felt like wet garbage, and apparently a Brutootle lived in it, all tentacles and teeth and hunger. Rick was grinning wide as he handed over the rest of the shit. Morty got another sweaty hug and finally. FINALLY they made it back into the motel.

Morty smelled horrible. He felt horrible. He had the taste of the pond water in his mouth, he had the pungent sand stuck in weird places under his nails and in his clothes. And the fart powder was lodged along his frontal lobe he was pretty sure. Not to mention after fighting off the pond-monster he was coated in a thick oil he wanted off of him this instant.

Rick seemed to have the same idea because they both met each other at the doorway to the bathroom.

“U-uh. D-do you gotta take a leak or something Morty?” Rick leered at Morty who started to glare back.

“N-no I was gonna, take a shower.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

The two kinda stood there for a bit before Rick shrugged and walked inside anyhow.

“R-Rick c’mon I smell awful a-and you got the shower first last time! I-I-I just wanna take a nice dunk i-in some warm water and let today just, g-get off of me.”

“I’m not stopping you Morty, you wanna join me? Be my guest.”

Morty stopped dead in his tracks and watched Rick closely. He was undoing his belt and tossing the shit in his pockets to the ground.

“I-I-I mean, I don’t- a-are you. Is that?”

“What Morty, you’ve seen me naked befoOOUUUOoore. Y-you think me wet and naked is gonna-“ He scoffed in the middle of his sentence and waved his hands at Morty “Look do whatever, but I’m gross and taking a shower now.”

Morty stood there sort of numbly for a moment before, finally, he peeled himself out of his clothes and tossed them with Ricks.

 

The water was instant heaven on Morty. Warm and soothing and mostly set up like a ‘normal’ shower. It had water coming down in droplets over them, it was a teal color and smelled kind of like ice-cream. Rick was just standing there, his hands on his shoulders as he let the water slowly wash away the day’s events. Morty stepped in after a second and dunked his own head under the water. It tasted kind of sour on his tongue. It was warm and had a minty feeling on his body, leaving it tingling and cool but so warm from the temperature.

Morty let out a low moan instantly and leaned his body against the tiles. It was such a good feeling in comparison to the grime that had been caked on him. The trail of hickeys he’d gotten from the monster looked sort of like a botched tattoo. They kissed little purple bruises all along his thigh, his stomach and back, ending on his jaw. The water was making their dull pain slightly more tolerable.

Rick enjoyed the view while Morty was relaxing under the water. He knew on the other hand, that this probably wasn’t going to be anything more than them showering together. Something he was going to argue they’d done before, but that was a while ago, and it was totally fake so it didn’t matter.

“H-Here.” Rick muttered, tossing over a bottle of three in one soap. It was Rick’s own personal mix. Something he kept on him since space-motels did not have soap to accommodate everyone. Not to mention you had no idea how clean those soaps where. No point in taking the risk.

Morty caught the bottle and gave a nod before pooling a little in his hands. He started with his hair, running those fingertips along all his curls, the lather that worked up only make them more pronounced the soap trailed along around and down his shoulders and-

Rick turned his back on Morty, not wanting to make this really anything more than a shower, and the way he was going, it was gonna be anything but that.

Morty cleaned up quickly and handed the soap back to Rick. It was his turn to watch Rick, and he was less reserved about doing so. He parked himself against the tile of the shower, still cold because it hadn’t been that long since they’d gotten in.

Rick was methodical in almost everything he did, and showering seemed to be no exception to this. His slender but knobby fingers reached into his hair and slowly started to work at it. Mostly he just made the normally frizzy and slightly fluffed up mess a calm and tame slick hanging in his eyes and around shoulders. Slowly he leaned himself back into the water and let the curtains of soap fall away and trail down his body.

Morty watched them snake down him and resisted the urge to touch. When Rick stepped away from the water though, simply to scrub at his arms, his chest, hips and thighs, it was interesting to see how his body folded and moved. The skin was lose and gave in ways Morty’s did not. It’s not that Morty hadn’t realized this before, but it was a little different to see him pull at his own skin, to watch how it gathered around his elbows and knees and neck. He scrubbed at the back of his shoulder and along his ribs, trying to get at his back.

“You- you know if you want I, erm, I-I-I can get that if you uh, if you want,” Morty offered shyly. He still wasn’t sure why this felt so much more personal or intimate than actually fucking. Maybe it was because this was sort of like seeing someone spill food on their shirt, or watching them do dishes, or wash their face. It was usually private and meant to be gross and unsexy. It was just human nature and needs. There was nothing meant to be enticing about Rick scrubbing his groin and getting into those nooks and folds. There was nothing inherently alluring to Morty scrubbing his armpits and his ass crack. But there was something personal and intimate at seeing someone so exposed and natural.

“Y-Yeah sure if you want, left the scrubber in the bag.” Rick just stood there and handed Morty the soap.

With the gel pooled in his palm, Morty reached out and pressed his palm into Rick’s back, his hands traced along his shoulders and down his back, not for a second being shy about the skin he was allowed to touch and explore. His fingers traced along and down Rick’s spine with his thumbs feeling each bump of his vertebrae.

The skin on Rick’s back was slightly more taught than the skin around his arms or knees, but it still gave way easily to Morty’s fingers. He pushed in a little harder as well to feel the webbing of muscle that was under Rick’s disarming skin. He looked frail, but Rick was wire and cord under that skin. Capable of running faster and hitting harder than most who happened to be receiving that lesson.

Morty rested his head along Rick’s shoulder, his fingers abandoning Rick’s spine and moving to trace themselves along his ribs and up along his chest. Enjoying the feeling of his heartbeat just barely rattling against his fingers and against the vibrations of the water rolling over them, he pressed his chest into him and held him for a second.

The heat and silence and calm was good.

It was a reprieve.

It felt for a second that every hardship that they’d had was slowly being released from their shoulders and flowing down the drain. It was probably the first time Morty really felt, honestly that this was real and not temporary. This wasn’t humoring him, this was Rick engaging in him and, maybe, actually enjoying what they were. Morty knew he did.

He knew he loved Rick, every horrible part of him, he loved him, perhaps not for it, but despite it.

Rick chuckled and it rattled along the insides of Morty’s lungs.

“You’re stabbing my back Morty.”

Morty’s face turned red and he backed up a good foot from Rick suddenly.

“S-Sorry I-I-I was, think, I was, I wasn’t thinking.”

“Looks like you were thinking about a-a few things, Mooorty” Rick was grinning lazily under the water and letting it take away the rest of the soap on his body. He was glad to know that he still had ‘It™ ‘ and ‘It™ ‘ seemed to be driving Morty a little crazy. He closed the gap Morty had made between them, and reached his hands down, one to grip at Morty’s hip and the other to palm his cock.

“You sure about that Morty?”

Morty was putty in Rick’s careful and matriculate hands. He’d always been. So when he stroked Morty, his fist wrapped around just tight enough to get a pressure built, but lose enough to twist his wrist and rub the meat of his thumb along the head of Morty’s dick, well Morty didn’t stand a chance. His thumb stroked along the shaft he let Morty buck his hips into his fist, needy and desperate to reach the finish line. It wasn’t long or perfect and Morty came sooner than he wanted to, but this wasn’t about showmanship or grace. It was impromptu and messy and quick, like the decision to shower together at all.

He was quiet when he came, his teeth pinching shut those lips but giving them that red and abused look Rick loved so much. Morty’s knees shook and he had to prop himself up along the tile of the shower once more. Rick had his own calm grin along his lips as he watched Morty slowly recover, and Morty watched Rick enjoy his afterglow.

 

* * *

 

 

They dried off separately, decided to toss their clothes just outside of the room they were renting and ignored the disgruntled workers outside who had the misfortune to pick it up. They got into boxers and collapsed on the sofa where they watched TV till they got too tired to keep their heads up. They got into bed and slept next to each other, comfortable being close and in their own space.

 

Things finally, for the time being, felt natural, raw, embarrassing and good.


End file.
